A more premium brand, from the coffee cup to the catering box
Branding · Packaging Design · Creative Direction · Graphic Design
Brooklyn Donuts & Coffee Co. is an Australian donut and coffee chain heading in a more premium direction, with specialty coffee a growing part of the business. As head creative, I look after how the brand shows up everywhere: in store, on packaging, across campaigns and online.
Refining the brand
The core typography and colour palette stayed. What changed was the direction around them. Photography, layout and visual style were refined to feel more considered and premium, while keeping the bold, playful personality Brooklyn customers know. “Born in Brooklyn” was retired, because it felt too American for an Australian brand.
Redesigning the packaging
Brooklyn is heading somewhere more premium, and the packaging needed to go with it. Coffee cups, donut boxes, catering boxes, retail bags and the bags for Brooklyn’s retail coffee beans were all redesigned as one range, and it’s now printed.
The direction was to do less, better. The yellow was dropped because it worked against the orange rather than with it, and cream replaced brown as the contrast colour. With fewer colours competing, brand orange does the work and the range feels more grown-up.
The risk with going premium is losing the fun. So the personality moved into the type: big, confident wording carries the Brooklyn character, which lets everything else stay restrained.
The cups also link straight into the Co. Collective loyalty program, so the packaging does a job beyond looking good.
Campaign creative
Alongside the core brand, I design the campaigns that keep it moving. That includes product launches like the Baked Donut range and Dot Cake, and seasonal moments such as Donut Day, Winter Wonderland and Made for Mum. Each campaign gets its own look, built within the brand so it still reads as Brooklyn.
Every asset has to work from a phone screen to a large shopping centre display, across social, email, in-store screens and print.
