OlssønBarbieri give coffee a voice across their meticulously philosophical brand for Stereoscope

“The black is a nod to the colour of their previous bags, but we needed to expand the palette to create a navigation system for the different types of roasts,” OlssønBarbieri’s Founder & Managing Director Henrik Olssøn tells us, discussing their identity for LA-based speciality coffee roaster, Stereoscope. “The colours are chosen to echo the natural materials used in the interior of the Stereoscopes locations,” he adds, noting the metal, stones, and wood found across their four locations, exemplifying the Olso-based design practice’s contextually-driven, systematic and fundamentally physical approach. Known for the quality of its roasts and the expertise behind the scenes, Stereoscope has continued to challenge the conventional views of coffee since its founding, turning towards unconventional methods of processing and tasting. With this in mind, OlssønBarbieri have championed the brand’s forward-thinking practice across the identity. Through copy and typography, they not only used the space as a platform to recognise the indisputable interconnection between coffee, climate change, capitalism and colonialism but identified that the coffee plant is a living organism and not a commodity. To cement this notion, OlssønBarbieri went one step further and introduced a first-person narrative on the coffee bags from the perspective of coffee arabica, giving the coffee its own voice to detail its role in the world. To continue this motif typographically across printed and digital mater, the design studio opted for Brunswick Grotesque by Dennis Grauel as the hero typeface. Chosen for its lack of cultural or historical associations, the typeface is typeset unpredictably across the brand, using five randomly assigned widths. Whilst reflecting the incalculability of organic life, the use of five weights also references the five petals of the coffee flower, as seen in the logomark, and the five Stereoscope principles that make each coffee unique. Moreover, it alludes to the theory of five elements that OlssønBarbieri investigated whilst researching the brand, guiding them down a thoughtful, profound path.