Bangal Dawson bring bold flavour, colour and type to speciality coffee trading platform TYPICA

TYPICA is an online platform that allows coffee growers and roasters around the world to trade green coffee beans directly. Offering direct connections via conversation, photography, video, social media, or even a virtual meeting, TYPICA closes the distance between producers and roasters and fosters a ‘community’ space online. Bangal Dawson – a creative studio based in NYC and Tokyo – have teamed up with TYPICA for their launch. The result pairs the vividly colourful and diverse realm of the brand with a like-minded creative approach through the core idea of integration and community. Specifically, through the key phrase ‘Get Closer.’ TYPICA’s logotype is based on Nasir Udin’s Restora Neue typeface from Indonesia, a renowned country for producing coffee. Creative director Tatsuya Ishikawa explains that this was chosen to bring an “ethnic yet modern look and feel” into the logo. A modernised version of its precursor, Restora, Restora Neue features a mix of old-style roman serif styles, and as a result, was the perfect choice for the brand. “On the logo,” he notes, “we revised the typeface making each letter closer (some letters are connected), and then to make it a visually more unique symbol, we added a dot of a green coffee bean hanging on the tree of ‘C.’” This visual element reappears in the brand’s symbol, which depicts the beans reaching human hands far and wide. For the secondary typeface, the studio opted for a simpler direction with Black [Foundry]’s Clother. “As the brand is a platform for all, we needed to make it not exclusive but inclusive and casual,” Ishikawa explains. This modern, geometric sans serif balances the ornamentation and ligatures of the primary typeface.