A culture insisting
on its right to exist

Extending a packaging strategy across three new origins meant running three independent research processes without a shared creative output. Each origin required its own brief, its own illustration direction, its own content strategy.

Each origin followed the same research structure: structured producer interviews, community conversations, and secondary research into the historical and political context of coffee in each region. In Guatemala the research identified pre-Hispanic cultural identity as the entry point. In Colombia, the relationship between armed conflict and cultural survival. In Peru, Amazonian musical tradition and environmental pressure.

The Popol Vuh established corn as the foundation of Guatemalan identity. The jaguar and the volcano were selected from the research as the two visual carriers of Mayan duality. The design showed roasters in the US a Guatemala the coffee market hadn't.

Decades of violence had forced expression underground, into dance, colour, and image. That finding defined the illustration brief. The design generated discomfort before it generated curiosity.

Cumbia amazónica, born from the collision of indigenous tradition and electric guitar in the early 1970s, gave voice to communities living under the pressure of oil extraction and deforestation. Man and nature as a single form, held together by sound and shamanic experience.

Four years of active production across three origins. Designs still printing and shipping to roasteries across key US markets. Roasters reference the packaging unprompted in their own Instagram content during harvest arrivals, across multiple seasons.