North Kaffe (Concept)

Designer: Craig Pinto
Country: United States

North is a fake brand that was put together under a simple (yet rather difficult) concept— positive and negative messaging. I wanted to tie a brand to an emotion, or crave. Similar to same feeling you get when curling up to a good TV show and having the sudden urge to eat popcorn. Or when you watch a movie where wind slightly nips the snow off the tip of an icy mountain (hint: like in “The Lord Of The Rings”), you suddenly feel cold inside.

With some research I found that Denmark is one of the happiest places on Earth. This bit of information was a great place for me to start. Everyone wants to be happy, and everybody wants to find a way to obtain it. An Addiction to Happiness was the tagline that came to mind when exploring these options. It uses the positive and negative initial concept, but brings everything together with a single phrase. Incorporating different variations to the tagline helped make it more human. For example, I used words like coziness, and warmth for the tagline. The variation of using these words makes the brand relateable to everyone.

With the development of the visuals, I tried to keep everything “Danish”. That includes (at least to me) wood textures, soft whites, light blues, maybe some reflective silvers to accentuate the elegance of the people. I wanted to make this brand feel cold, but inviting. I wanted the animations on the website to feel smooth and comforting. Most importantly the visuals show almost no reference to coffee. The photography and design tries to bring awareness to an emotion, rather than a product. The North Kaffe brand is a feeling you get before drinking coffee, rather than an actual cup of coffee.