Case Study
Defining a unified global brand vision and aesthetic framework for Blue Bottle Coffee.

Scope of Work
Brand Strategy
Photography Direction
Design Direction
Website Redesign

Brand Strategy

One of the original innovators of specialty coffee, Blue Bottle Coffee's global expansion led to different brand strategies and expressions across the regions it operated. Our goal was to find a singular solution so the brand experience could be cohesive globally. Building on strategic work from Douglas Holt, I was part of the leadership team that distilled what Blue Bottle Coffee stood for and we crafted the new global brand essence and positioning. We tackled everything from the brand history, the brand values, beliefs and attributes. We also created a film to help roll the new essence out internally for globally alignment and I went on a tour walking the regions through the new essence. 

Photography Direction

We took the core attributes of the brand as well as the elevated positioning and translated that into a new photography language. We created a unified system that tackled everything from lifestyle imagery to elevated still life as well as product photography. Early morning light was a consistent theme across all elevated photography and all got a consistent wash that aligned the look and feel.

We did a phase of test photography to validate the content strategy and budget before embarking on the ambitious task of re-shooting the full asset suite for the house. The result maintained the simplicity and functionality the brand is known for, while elevating the aesthetic and adding a layer of warmth to all the assets.

Website Redesign

The legacy site for Blue Bottle Coffee was inflexible to evolution, did a poor job of product storytelling and did not showcase what made Blue Bottle Coffee different from the crop of other coffee companies out there. The revised site set out to tackle all of these challenges and as well as present it with the simplicity the brand is known for. 

We landed on a components based site built on headless so that flexibility and global expansion would be optimized. This also allowed us the runway to have more personalized experiences down the road as the company grew in sophisitcation. 

PDPs were redesigned to maximize all of the information that our coffee afficionados would want from the origins of our beans to tasting notes from our founder to brew guides so they could get the same quality we do in our cafes. Subscription experience had grown immensely and was redesigned to allow for much more ease and control for consumers. Additioal brand, blog and cafe areas were designed to allow much better brand storytelling.

Credits

Brand Strategy: Douglas Holt, Emma Cofer
Leadership Team: James Freeman, Karl Strovink, Saki Igawa, Jeff Cha, Emily King
Head of Global Creative: Ryan Jones
Site Redesign Agency Partner: King & Partners
Ecom: Aditi Jain, Kyle Wyper
Photography: Nicholas Wolf, Zachary Gray, Bennet Perez
Ecom Photography: Sandbox & Nicholas Wolf
Art Direction: Kaela Rawson
Films: Michael Phillips, Jamie Vitt

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