What Bunca [Bu’n ka] means:
“Here you go, your coffee.”
BUNCA is a cafe with headquarters in Frankfurt am Main, Germany and branches in other German cities as well as Dubai.
With a brand name that has such a warm and yet sassy personality, it’s important to find a design style that also shows a spectrum of character—playful, colourful, eye-catching, but also intense, easy to process, and a storytelling of the products. I went with angular, geometric shapes and mixed them with soft, flowing, organic illustrations…a lot of trials. The result is a visually distinct and standout brand identity for coffee. It reflects their brand principles: “love, peace, and damn good coffee.”
Each coffee has a corresponding animal based on their flavour – from intense and dark, to mild and sweet. The base packaging have slight differences—the regular product line are solid black (to also cut on production costs) and seasonal products have silver or gold floral embossing on the bags.
I learned that some of the geometric designs did not fit the curvature of the bags and cups well,
or that some angles needs to be adjusted to accommodate the softness of packaging materials, and certain colours combinations worked better on gloss versus and matte.
Illustration of the coffee lifecycle, from bean to flower drawn for one of the interior walls of the cafe. Matching packaging with interior design!
Some rough sketches—I wanted to blend more organic and lighter imagery with solid geometric shapes and to try different styles, from watercolour-like to raw sketches, and solid blocks.
The final geometric style shows a contrast of the sharpness (or to some tastebuds, the bitterness) of drinking coffee, while the curved lines of the plants show the softer stories of the beans. All in all, the final results were very loved by the client.
Art direction // Brand design // Experience design // Packaging, merch and interior design // Illustration // Photography
