Tanbrown Coffee
An Asian-owned coffee roasting business based in Atlanta, Georgia. It launched in January of 2022 with desire to develop a coffee brand that centers collaboratively sourced coffee that provides transparent information and a skillfully roasted product to the customer.
I lead the design process, build, and implementation of branding and continue to update it to this day.
Deliverables
Branding and Initial Web build
Tools
Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Figma, Shopify, Procreate
Client
Tanbrown Coffee
Year
2022 (Updated 2024)
Tanbrown Coffee is an idea that was birthed over dinner.
After being an active participant and leader in the Specialty Coffee industry, I saw there was room for growth. As a curious barista, I asked questions about the growing origins represented on retail shelves. Being Korean American, I started to wonder why Asian coffees were not represented. After taking time to learn how to roast in a methodical, independent, sensory and research heavy way, Tanbrown Coffee was created as a project to see what can happen when design skills are combined with coffee skills to bring Asian coffee to Atlanta and beyond.
Updates: 2024
Much of the branding remains the same, but the brand colors are used in a system and the website now has a warmer feeling, using more images to communicate to the customer. Subscriptions and Event Calendars have been implemented to the website.
Notable
Press
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In April, 2022 Tanbrown Coffee was featured in the Coffee Design portion of Sprudge, a leading publication of the specialty coffee industry.
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In January 2023, Marissa was featured as a Creative to Watch in January 2023
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Tanbrown Coffee is listed among some of the best coffee shops to visit in Atlanta (even without a physical location)
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Marissa was featured to speak about life and business during a short interview with Voyage ATL
Initial Goals: 2022
Tell a Story
The goal for Tanbrown Coffee is to educate coffee customers about Asian Coffee Growing Regions in a non-pretentious, welcoming way
Take Up Space
Provide a platform for Asian American roasters to share their skills in a landscape where they are underrepresented
Fill a Need
Asian coffee is not common as single origin and many consumers think it is only dark and robust, but there was a need to show that Asian Specialty Coffee varies as much as any other region
Branding Goals
Desire to be seen as welcoming, informative, and community focused. Used branding as a way to graphically represent that feeling
Challenges
Transparency within the industry while promoting an underrepresented product and creating a brand language with limited resources and bandwidth was a challenge
Considerations
We took into consideration how a guest would flow through our website through creation of personas, trends within the coffee industry, and the ease or ability to iterate on designs later
Customer Journey
I listed a list of actions and entry ways, created a journey map, and built a basic wireframe on Figma. These are the basic functions we needed the site to perform at a base level in what we wanted to include for the MVP. These exercises allowed me to think about potential pathways a customer would take when searching for Tanbrown while empathizing with the customer.
Updates to the site and features like subscriptions and event calendar were implemented in 2024.
Choosing a Platform
Squarespace
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+professional templates built in
+quick and easy to use
+mid level customizability
+low upfront cost -
+have to manually edit all of the tax information for ecommerce
+features for sales are not yet as integrated as other builders
+grid system can limit creativity at times
Shopify
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+strong ecommerce builder, could scale well
+flexible plans
+good back end metrics
+responsive support team -
+plugins for a lot of integrations
+more need for coding skills
+less customizability
+payment integrations built-in
Wix
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+highly customizable
+limited plug-ins
+flexible plans
+no transaction fees -
+too many customizations can limit functionality
+unsure of how it will scale
+more time to make design edits to make sure it is good for mobile and web
Initial Branding
Tanbrown coffee was a name that was derived from sitting down to talk about the design process. We wanted to guide the brand with the words Playful, Nostalgic, Welcoming. When we thought about our original colors, the colors tan and brown came up in conversation, and we realized, we could put them together to be Tanbrown because coffee is tan and brown and we are also tan and brown. We wanted to have an air of playfulness while still addressing complex topics within the coffee space.
When choosing the logo, we wanted it to look symbolic, embody our brand, and still maintain a playfulness. It mimics the shape of a slide while also having a T and B in the logo. We made a logo that could be a symbol and felt reminiscent of symbols and letters from our respective motherlands and alphabets.
Finally, the colors and typefaces were chosen to make the brand feel more open and welcoming as well as call back to childhood.
First “Final” Designs
After many iterations, we had our first round of illustrations, and production
Closing Thoughts
Create Room to Iterate
The goal of this brand was to build a system that can be easily adapted in the future. Whether from colors or motifs, there was room to grow
Time Constraints are Good
The initial launch of this brand, site, and print deliverables had around a two week turn around time, resulting in good bones to work with and to test when we went live
Using a Design Approach
With design thinking as the backbone, I was able to create a strategy informed by customer journey and how someone would approach Tanbrown Coffee as a brand
Looking to the Future
As the business steadily grows, there will be more ways to change whether it’s implementing more opportunities to chat with customers, different brand strategy, or educational content on the web
Keep Pushing
Small and traceable changes are sometimes more impactful than big movement where everything can change at once and even if the business hasn’t taken off overnight, it takes time
Check it Out
For proof of concept and to view the ever-changing work for yourself, visit the website