Nitro Cold Brew and Cascara CansLabel design for Hej Coffee and Social Impact Coffee (May 2025)
Overview
Four labels, two brands, one tight deadline. I designed the printed labels and wrote the on-can copy for slim-can Nitro Cold Brew and Cascara Tonic drinks for Hej Coffee and Social Impact Coffee, created to launch at the London Coffee Festival.
The brief
The founders of both brands asked for a cold brew and a cascara tonic in each range, in a 250 ml slim can. My job was to make each label appealing and true to its brand’s guidelines, while making the two drinks read as a pair.
I worked directly with the canning supplier, Cold Brew Coffee Co., on label requirements, while the Head Roaster taste-tested until the recipes were right.
Why cascara?
Cascara is made from the dried skins of coffee cherries, a by-product that is usually discarded. Both brands saw it as a versatile, sustainable ingredient and a chance to do something different with their coffee. It came from Beneficio La Chumeca, a Costa Rican cooperative doing excellent work in sustainability. It was also a rare find and the aim was to be among the first.
The challenge
The main design challenge was the cascara. The cold brew was a familiar product, but cascara is not, so its label had to introduce an unfamiliar ingredient and make it feel exciting at a glance, on a narrow, tall canvas, while the can is held in the hand.
The back of the can was largely taken up by legal information, so I wrote short copy that tells the story of the coffee’s origins (women farmers in Rwanda and Kinini Washing Station for the cold brew, La Chumeca for the cascara) in the space left over.
Time was the other constraint. The festival ran from 15 to 18 May, and label requirements were still being updated by the supplier until 6 May.
The design
Both ranges share a clear structure: brand mark, hero visual, drink name, three tasting notes, volume. A repeating “Keep me chilled! / Shake me!” band wraps the top of each can, carrying practical instructions in a playful way.
Social Impact Coffee: soft and approachable. The cold brew uses the brand’s cream and black, with coffee bean and chocolate bar icons in the signature % configuration, a nod to the 65% of profits donated to charity, which double as taste note indicators. The cascara tonic is a soft orange with the cherry icon as the centrepiece, signalling its floral, peachy character.
Hej Coffee: bold and graphic. The cold brew is stacked condensed type in black on white, with a faint coffee plant illustration behind it. The cascara tonic is a coffee plant illustration on electric pink, one of the brand’s colours and a reference to Elephant and Castle, where the roastery was based.
In both ranges, the cold brew is the calm, classic coffee and the cascara is the loud, fruity one.
The outcome
The cans arrived in time for the London Coffee Festival, where the tasting was a success. They didn’t reach shelves as cascara’s regulatory status in the UK was unclear at the time, and both drinks still needed shelf-life testing to set an accurate best-before date. Those were outside the design remit, but the work held up on the stage it was built for.
