Dark Woods Coffee is a community-focused coffee roastery, discovering responsibly sourced speciality coffees from some of the world’s best producers.

 As the name suggests, Dark Woods’ home can be found in a converted Victorian textile mill at the foot of the West Yorkshire Pennines, surrounded by windswept moorland, drystone walls and ancient woodland. Both the landscape and the local people inspire how this Yorkshire business crafts coffee.

It was important that the branding, packaging and website reflected Dark Woods’ deep roots in their rural environment. We worked with Swiss illustrator Julia Marti to produce a series of ink-based illustrations bringing to life the characters of the local area.

Each individual coffee blend features a different animal that makes each flavour instantly identifiable to the customer, while bold yellow packaging ensures the products stand out on the shelf. Additionally, carefully considered design pieces like the Tales from the Dark Woods zine, postcards and tasting notes were created to fully detail the origin of each coffee.

To capture the atmosphere of the natural environment online, we worked with experienced filmmakers and photographers to shoot the terrain around the mill. These images were central to the original website that we developed for Dark Woods, using Shopify and producing an easy-to-use web shop for an international audience.