How do you handle name the actual problem?

Nothing was wrong with the mark or the stock choice. The failure was structural: a white self-adhesive label sitting on brown kraft, with a yellow blend dot overlapping its corner. Two competing rectangles, three unrelated colours, and a label small enough that the bag reads as unbranded from two metres. Leave the dragonfly and "PRIVATE ROAST HOUSE BERLIN" untouched, keep every line of copy verbatim, and treat the white label island as the only thing to solve. Three directions, each attacking it differently, so the roaster can choose on cost rather than taste.

How do you handle look 1: kill the label entirely?

Any applied label costs stock, adhesive, die and application. On a 250g bag at this volume, that is most of the packaging budget. One Prussian blue ink printed direct on the kraft, with the dragonfly redrawn as an engraved line block running the full height and bleeding off the top edge. The blend moves onto a kraft hang tag on waxed thread, blind debossed with the blend letter. Cheapest per unit at volume, and one bag SKU now serves every blend.

How do you handle look 2: make the label an object?

Keeping a label means keeping an edge, and a printed white edge always reads as a sticker. Bare kraft, then a 3 × 4.5 in arch die-cut label on deep Prussian blue uncoated: the dragonfly as a multi-level blind emboss with no ink at all, the wordmark in copper hot foil. The yellow dot becomes a copper-foil coin seal in the same blue stock. Emboss and foil on coloured stock is the fastest way to move a perceived shelf price, and the seal turns the blend range into a collectible system.

How do you handle look 3: let the mark become the surface?

A blend range means new artwork per SKU unless the variable is isolated. A full-height banderole in soft grey-green wrapping the face and both gussets, with the dragonfly cropped to a single wing rendered tone-on-tone in spot gloss varnish, so it appears only where light rakes it. Editorial serif in Prussian blue, address set as a colophon at the foot. The blend is a small letterpressed chip label, one colour per blend: six colours, one plate change, no new bag art.

How do you handle nothing upstream changes?

Changing pouch format means requalifying the filler, the zipper and the one-way degassing valve. All three directions keep the existing pouch, hardware and fill line. The only variable is what gets printed, applied or stamped.

Design exercise · Labels · Print Peppermint

Three ways to get a white sticker off brown kraft

An unsolicited redesign of a Berlin roast house's 250g pouch, explored as three producible directions. The dragonfly and the roast-house line stay in all three; the white inkjet label island is what each one attacks. No change to the pouch, the zipper, the valve or the fill line.

Labels for Café de Enrico, Berlin with look 2: arch die-cut label, blue uncoated, multi-level blind emboss + copper foil stamping, 250g kraft stand-up pouch, existing hardware, look 1: 1-colour direct print + blind-deboss hang tag and look 3: full-height banderole, tone-on-tone spot gloss + letterpress chip labels.

FoilsCHENHUI Standard Metallic (M series) Copper TechniquesDeboss, Die Cut, Direct Print, Emboss, Copper Foil, Letterpress, Spot Gloss Varnish StocksKraft / PET / aluminium / PE pouch, One-way degassing valve, Press-to-close zipper, Colorplan Imperial Blue, Gmund Colors Matt 25 · Willow Grey

The idea

Café de Enrico is a private roast house on Fritz-Reuter-Straße in Berlin-Schöneberg, and it is Austin's local. He has bought their coffee for years, and for years he had the same quiet thought every time a bag landed on the counter: the roasting is careful, the service is careful, and the packaging is a white inkjet label with a yellow dot on it.

Five rules

01Name the actual problem. Leave the dragonfly and "PRIVATE ROAST HOUSE BERLIN" untouched, keep every line of copy verbatim, and treat the white label island as the o…
02Look 1: kill the label entirely. One Prussian blue ink printed direct on the kraft, with the dragonfly redrawn as an engraved line block running the full height and bleedin…
03Look 2: make the label an object. Bare kraft, then a 3 × 4.5 in arch die-cut label on deep Prussian blue uncoated: the dragonfly as a multi-level blind emboss with no ink at…
04Look 3: let the mark become the surface
05Nothing upstream changes. All three directions keep the existing pouch, hardware and fill line. The only variable is what gets printed, applied or stamped.

Why we did this

Nobody asked for this. Austin took it on himself as creative charity, in the way printers sometimes redesign the thing they look at every morning. The brief was his own: keep everything the roaster has earned, change only what is letting them down, and cost it three ways so it is a real option rather than a flattering mockup.

The dragonfly stays. The roast-house line stays. Every address, URL and weight stays exactly as set. What changes is the surface it all sits on.

Café de Enrico pouch redesign, direct-printed single-ink engraved dragonfly on kraft with a debossed hang tag — Look 1. One Prussian blue ink direct on the kraft, dragonfly as an engraved line block bleeding off the top edge, blend on a blind-debossed hang tag.

Macro of a single-ink engraved dragonfly wing printed direct onto kraft pouch fibre — Look 1, macro. The ink sits into the kraft tooth, so the linework reads as printed rather than applied.

Macro of a multi-level blind embossed dragonfly and copper foil on deep blue uncoated label stock — Look 2, macro. Three relief heights, no ink in the dragonfly at all, copper foil only on the rule and the wordmark.

Café de Enrico pouch redesign with a full-height grey-green banderole label, tone-on-tone spot gloss wing and a chartreuse letterpress blend chip — Look 3. Full-height banderole, the wing in tone-on-tone spot gloss, blend isolated to a letterpressed chip label.

Macro of tone-on-tone spot gloss varnish over matte grey-green uncoated label stock — Look 3, macro. Same colour, different surface: the venation exists only as a change from matte to shine.

How to choose

Look 1 is the cheapest per unit at volume, because there is no label to buy, die or apply.

Look 2 buys the most perceived value per euro spent, because emboss and foil on coloured stock is the finish combination customers read as expensive.

Look 3 scales best across a blend range, because the only variable per SKU is a small chip label.

Copy held verbatim in all three: CAFÉ DE ENRICO · PRIVATE ROAST HOUSE BERLIN · www.cafe-enrico.de · Fritz-Reuter-Straße 13 · 10827 Berlin, Germany · e250g · SYNTHESE BLEND · 50% ARABICA / 50% ROBUSTA.

Start from these materials

Same paper, foil and finish, locked in — nothing of this piece artwork comes with it.

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Redesigned by Austin Terrill, founder.