“When 65% of profits go to good causes, profit shouldn’t be a dirty word. Instead of looking at this as a charity, we applied the accountability of business to the business of doing good.”
— Philip Koh, Strategy Director at Without
Context
Social Impact Coffee is the brainchild of Adrian Evans, former director of food at Sodexo. Adrian’s vision was to harness the scale of coffee at work for social good. A community-interest company (CIC), Social Impact Coffee supplies the highest grade coffee to progressive businesses, and reinvests 65% of profits back into community causes.
Social Impact Coffee needed a brand bold enough to simply tell a complex story, but subtle enough to co-exist in client businesses.
Because Social Impact Coffee teach their clients about great coffee through tastings, a trip to their roasters was the perfect place to start.
DEFINE
Purpose-led businesses can feel full-on: disrupting, campaigning, telling people how to behave. Because Social Impact Coffee works in partnership with other businesses, early work that explored this direction felt too political and exhausting. Social Impact Coffee needed more subtlety, an identity that could generating awareness whilst co-existing within client brands.
Moodboards for some of the territories we developed, with different approaches on visuals and brand strategy.
DESIGN
Complex stories need simple messages. Our identity for Social Impact Coffee is inspired by its key, eye-catching fact: 65% of profits being reinvested into community causes. This figure inspired the logo, icon design, grid and layout – applying the language of business to the business of doing good.
Because Social Impact Coffee control the entire process – from sourcing from regenerative farms, to roasting to their own specifications – they can offer clients bespoke blends. Here the identity is flexible and playful, with illustrations highlighting signature blends and tasting notes.
Visual design system based on the 65° grid