Design Details: The Subjective Shape of Flavor with WeBe Coffee

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The new WeBe Coffee bags. All images courtesy of WeBe Coffee.

Despite the specialty coffee industry’s incessant quest to codify the language of flavor — thus creating some sort of objective differentiation from flatlined commodity coffee — the perception of flavor remains infinitely subjective.

It’s perhaps even whimsical.

Take the new coffee bags from Phoenix-based specialty coffee roaster WeBe Coffee. After working with designer Katie Scharrer (@KatieSutton), WeBe recently introduced bags featuring custom shapes as a way to visualize flavor.

While traditional written flavor notes still exist on the new packaging — think words like grapefruit, lemongrass or cocoa — they’re complemented by effervescent new shapes that allow for more subjective associations.

“On our packaging you will see flavor notes suggested — these are the subtle and sometimes very forward flavor notes that you’re going to get from that particular roast,” a representative of the coffee company recently told DCN. “[But] when most people taste coffee, the differences between a chocolate and baker’s chocolate flavor note aren’t going to be very obvious — it’s very subjective.”

At WeBe Coffee in Phoenix, Arizona.

Thus, the company sought to keep the concept of flavor “fun and lighthearted,” allowing the drinker to freely associate with the corresponding shapes.

The flavor-shape concept also allows for some elbow room in the packaging.

“A big goal we had was to create a flexible design that also allowed for variable labels so that any bag could be used for any roast,” WeBe said. “We solved this by creating a base six bags in various color combinations with different flavor shapes. With our new design, our packaging will work with both coffees we are roasting now and in the future. This flexible design also helps prevent waste as the coffees we roast are constantly rotating and changing.”

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