NZ Roaster/Retailer Wins Global Award for Best Coffee Packaging

Nick Brown | July 2, 2013

Coffee Supreme, a New Zealand roastery and retailer with three NZ locations and another in Melbourne, Australia, has won a prestigious Dieline Package Design Award for its custom coffee cups.

The coffee company took first place in the non-alcoholic beverage category, one of 13 categories in the competition. Presented at the Dieline Package Design Conference, held in Conjunction with How Design Live at the Moscone Center in San Francsisco, the Dieline awards celebrate quality, creativity and marketability in brand packaging. This year, there were more than 1,100 entries from 61 countries.

The Dieline judges lauded Coffee Supreme for its innovative design, including the functionality of having all three sizes of its coffee cups in different colors.

Here is more from the design team, Aukland, NZ-based Hardhat Design:

Coffee Supreme’s take-out cups were already known in NZ and Australia for being unusual, distinctive and quirky, so while we knew from our re-brand brief that they wanted the brand to ‘grow up,’ it was important they didn’t lose their individuality.

The cups were also a great place to put across the company’s character & principles; their love & enthusiasm for the handmade craft of making coffee, their confident and quirky nature, their approachable and supportive staff, and the importance they placed in staying true to the good old fashioned standards the company started out with.

“We designed 16 individual cups, each with a different hand-drawn illustration, grouped into in 3 different colors to clearly distinguish between sizes.

The designs feel current in their style while also giving a nod to the past, referencing the traditional skill of the hand-crafted. You’ll see, amongst others, hints of 1800s etched signage, 40s movie titling, & 50s neon.

In creating this collection of cups, each with their own characterful hand-drawn or painted illustration, we hoped to replace the somewhat thoughtless routine of buying a take-out coffee with a more unique and personal experience, encouraging you to take a moment to stop & reflect; to look at the detail and humor in the illustrations, to look forward to seeing which cup your coffee might arrive in, having a particular favorite.

Put simply, this was about re-connecting people with the great cup of coffee in their hands.”

Check out Coffee Supreme’s winning cups: