Avatar Coffee Roasters is an expert team with decades of combined experience in cafe and business management, roasting, leadership, and logistics. They foster open-minded, ethnically diverse communities through philanthropic activities and ethical sourcing of curated coffees to cultivate meaningful relationships. With a national expansion in mind, they needed to tackle their primary problem, which they thought was sales. So first, we held several deep dives to uncover the core issue, which meant realizing sales for what they are, results. From there, the Avatar team brought Playstead onboard to help clarify and design solutions for the real problem—their brand. In 2015, the estimated number of specialty coffee shops in the US exceeded 30,000. Pairing this highly fragmented, saturated market with peoples’ lack of time compounds the issue. So for Avatar, potential customers’ minds demand their active brand development focused on establishing trust.

That said, we began by acknowledging their prospects’ needs to build systems that serve them. Above all, Avatar operates at a time of historically weak human connections where consumption patterns are in flux and don’t nurture relationships. Rituals, on the other hand, thrive on connectivity. So creating new rituals or renewing them is Avatar’s answer. It’s about the producers, importers and exporters, roasters, baristas, cafés, coffee, communities, and everything in between to deepen peoples’ relationships with their brand. And it represents the shift from functional to near spiritual levels of brand worship for them, all wrapped around memories of their experiences. This solution helps customers find what they care about most—flavor. It’s part of a system built on color and white space. Unlike most coffee packages, the stand-up pouch is best here because it is less material which agrees with the sustainability strategy Playstead developed for them. Its triangular profile echoes luminance elements from Avatar’s logomark. And its wide stance is both untapped in the industry and representative of horizons or new beginnings hence the logo’s location as if rising from the East. The front’s bold color commands attention on the shelf through effective brand color blocking that also communicates its roast level—light, medium, and dark—the label clarifies roast, too. White space isn’t simply empty here; it’s activated to drive customers’ attention. And, the ‘+’ pattern in the background relates to Avatar’s technical expertise symbolizing the compounding effects of investing in an endeavor towards mastery or enlightenment. The green wave element is intentionally ambiguous to give customers a moment of revelation once they discover it’s the literal roast curve for Avatar’s coffees. Development involved equally considering what to include and exclude. In this case, less is undoubtedly more.

Simply put, the cup system positions Avatar to reveal the sublime through visual expression. For the hot cups, the Avatar logo progresses upwards in what appears as steps. It avoids the most common comparisons by utilizing the brand color to create a color-rich space. And it’s the appropriate time—as observed on the cold cups, too—to accommodate customers’ lifestyles by inviting them to join Avatar with an on-brand hashtag to nurture their growing community. This system is one signal of their devotion to them. After all, it’s their customers’ journeys.

All touchpoints beginning with the logo are context-rich, honoring the Hindu way of life—hence the company name—for Avatar’s founders. Even still, it’s refined, looking effortless while considering the meaning of everything included and excluded, and is always intent on enlightening. Themes of devotion to excellence and personal growth comprise a brand identity that beckons people to uncover new rituals and renew others through Avatar. These customer-driven solutions open dialogues by demonstrating care in what Avatar does because they care about helping them. They ebb and flow while guided by their core purpose and meet them at the ground level, where they’ll grow together as their trusted brand by helping make their lives transformational.