Onyx Coffee Lab Labels Create A Bold Brand Identity To Match Their Green Coffee Roasts
Tags: Coffee, Sustainability, Food And Drink

Onyx Coffee Lab Labels Create A Bold Brand Identity To Match Their Green Coffee Roasts StickerGiant Jun 17, 2019·3 min read

Onyx Coffee Lab strives to create the perfect cup of coffee by mixing science and artisan methods of roasting, brewing, and sourcing coffee. To match their brand aesthetic, they ordered up matte coffee labels packed with information and clean design.

Onyx has four locations in northwest Arkansas, with Fayetteville, Springdale, Bentonville and Rodgers.

The Rodgers location is a new Onyx cafe and the Onyx HQ. Under one roof you’ll find their new shop with a one-of-a-kind coffee bar; The Foreman, a speakeasy; Dry Storage, an event space; and Doughp, the Onyx bakery. With all of these brands, options and diverse businesses, Onyx is building something bigger than coffee: community.

Sometimes, customers don’t live near an Onyx location, but they need freshly roasted and convenient Onyx coffee. To solve that problem, Onyx offers hassle-free coffee subscriptions. Every Tuesday they roast and ship out their subscription coffee. Customers can choose the frequency of deliveries, the quantity and the coffee style, with choices ranging from their Southern Weather, Geometry, Monarch, Decaf Colombia Medellín, Cold Brew, or Roaster’s Choice styles, which is a different single origin coffee with each delivery.

The company was started by Jon and Andrea in October of 2012 on a dream that started with serving a sweet, black cup of coffee to customers in Arkansas. From the beginning, they viewed coffee as a mythical drink where delicate flavors present themselves through a green coffee bean that’s grown and processed with love and care. They roasted to enhance but not mask flavor, and the Coffee Lab team brews to highlight those flavors. Out in their stores, the Onyx staff provides the kind of service that meets people where they are, focusing on a kind approach and a desire to please customers in the exchange at the counter and throughout their stay, whether it’s a business meeting or a meetup between two old friends. They have an extensive collection of coffee equipment for their discerning clientele to have at-home and on-the-go Onyx experiences, and an educational video series to teach customers how to maximize the flavor in their cup.

Every beverage that comes from Onyx Coffee Lab starts with green coffee. They believe that no amount of roasting expertise or beverage mixology can take the place of the kind of green coffee that’s the result of intentionality at the farm level. Onyx coffees are grown and harvested to maintain quality and consistency from cherry ripeness to density then processed to continue that quality creates a coffee that is clean, flavorful and interesting from cup to cup.

Jon also serves as the green buyer, drinking hundreds of cups of coffees in various locals in an effort to find the select few that make it back to their coffee. Back in the Lab, the team roasts and cups dozens of coffee samples a week, and they source coffees that taste great as a solo espresso, as a part of their Southern Weather house blend, or in a single bag of coffee that they vac-pac and sell in small releases.

But back to these coral-colored product labels for their year-round Monarch blend. They are a beautifully crafted piece of information design, with bold colors and strong use of typography. There is space for elevation, origin, cup flavor profile and brew strength. They even manage to add their logo and the partnership with Metad in Ethiopia.

When brewing up a brand experience, it takes time to get the messaging just right, kind of like slow roasting green coffee beans to make the perfect cup. For this label design the end result is nearly as good as the roast itself.