Mother Cluckers

Design: Rachel Jones
Location: United Kingdom
Project Type: Student Project
School: Shillington College
Tutor: Hilary Archer and Alice Merritt
Packaging Contents: Coffee
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Foil
Printing Process: Digital printing

Brief: To develop the brand identity, backstory and design for a new, unique, boutique coffee brand.

Mother Cluckers is a coffee brand for punks.

Inspired by a gang of punk chickens who escaped a battery farm in Brazil, this coffee is for people who want something that stands out from the crowd, has it’s own individual character, and fuels their energy to stand up and fight the system for another day.

The design of the packaging reflects the coffee’s punk attitude with the use of mismatched typeface in the logo (reflective of punk art that started in the 70s and 80s), the prominent black and white colour palette with tones of blue, pink and green, and the use of off-centred and angled labels and words on the packaging and wider collateral. Illustrated chicken characters were created to represent the battery farm hens who inspired the coffee, which enables each pack and flavour to have its own individual character and also brings the brand and backstory to life. The tone of voice across the range is particularly important in this brand in reflecting the fiery independence of the people who drink it.

The design of this packaging evolved from a story about punk battery farm hens, and by rooting the brand identity in punk culture and the mindset of standing up against the mainstream it enabled the design of the packs to be really fun and use elements from art related to punk culture on both the packs themselves and throughout wider collateral. Tone of voice with this packaging was particularly important in connecting with the right audience, giving different flavour packs names like ‘Brutal Boycott’ and ‘I Predict A Riot’. It also enabled the design of wider collateral to be really playful, with creating big splatters of paint on the ground for environmental wayfinding and creating protest badges to hand out in the coffee shop itself.