Haldane
A roastery identity built on the hour it works, first light.
01The problem
Haldane is a specialty coffee roastery supplying independent cafés and selling bags online. It roasts in small batches before dawn, so beans ship on the day they are roasted.
Specialty coffee branding has converged on kraft paper, hand-drawn lettering and a mountain. Haldane needed to stand out on a wholesale price list and on a café counter at the same time.
The identity also had to scale across surfaces with very different constraints. A 250 g bag, a takeaway cup and a delivery van each fail in different ways. Wholesale partners needed to apply the brand without a designer on hand.
02The decision
We anchored everything in the hour Haldane works, first light. The sun on the horizon became the mark, and the palette moves from roast-dark to ember like the sky before sunrise.
We chose a bold grotesque set in capitals. It reads from across a café, prints cleanly on uncoated stock and steps away from the hand-lettered look of the category.
We pushed contrast instead of texture. Two colors carry most applications, which keeps print runs on bags and cups affordable for a roastery at this stage.
03The mark, and why it holds
The mark is a half sun rising over three bars of decreasing width. The bars also nod to the roast curve the team uses to profile each bean.
We built it on whole units so it holds as a single-color stamp on kraft, a screen print on cups and an embroidered patch. At 14 pixels, the bars merge cleanly into a sun on a line.
A stamp version reduces the bars to one. It is made for the rubber stamp used on wholesale invoices and sample bags.
04The system behind it
Roast and Ember carry the brand. Bone is the working ground, and Oat appears only where natural paper stock already provides it.
Type is one family in two weights. Bold capitals set names and headlines, and the regular weight sets origin notes and brewing guides.
A horizon line runs through every layout at the same proportion, echoing the mark. It gives posters, menus and bags a shared structure without repeating the logo everywhere.
05Out in the world
Bags use one label system across every origin. The origin, roast date and tasting notes change, but the structure never does. A café owner can spot a Haldane bag from across the room.
Cups carry the sun alone, and the wordmark moves to the sleeve. Cups are photographed from above far more often than from the side.
Menu boards and wholesale price lists share one grid. Partner cafés can display the brand consistently without commissioning their own design work.
06The rulebook we left behind
The guidelines include print specifications for kraft and coated stock, because the colors shift between them. They close with a wholesale kit, the exact files a partner café needs to show the brand correctly.