Nostos

Drinking coffee for the Greeks is a daily ritual, as most of them cannot live without coffee in their lives. It is a tradition to serve your guest Greek coffee as part of the Greek “filoxenia” (hospitality) and even younger generations like its taste. This kind of coffee has been around for centuries. That is why there are so many cafes in Greece and companies engaged in the art of coffee.

Brief: Our client wanted to launch a new brand of Greek coffee, so we had to design a new brand identity and packaging from scratch. This kind of product will be sold in supermarkets and other coffee shops, so it should differentiate from the competition in the field.

Design Approach: We were really excited for this project as we are coffee lovers. Many memories arose from our early childhood with our grandmothers/mothers preparing it for guests. So we really tried to create something that would honor this unique product & its history.

First of all the name given to us, Nostos, means the act of returning home. In this specific project the name was meant to describe the journey back in our roots & traditions. In particular, our client wanted to celebrate an era where people with simple acts of kindness like the ritual of coffee drinking created strong bonds & friendships between them. While drinking Greek coffee they were sharing their problems & secrets with one another.

So we created a hand-drawn typeface with vintage references to celebrate this old good times. In addition, the symbol of the boat has a strong connection with the ‘nostos’ of Ancient Greek hero Odysseus and Greece in general, with its strong connection to the sea. Keeping that in mind we decided that the color blue would be the best choice for the overall packaging.

For the main graphic we designed an illustration of the Greek coffee cup for a friendly and inviting end-result. Furthermore, small elements that needed to be celebrated such as ‘briki’ ( a small brass pot with a long handle) were also illustrated from us.