I've been not-so-patiently waiting for this moment: packaging for the y00ts coffee bar has finally been manufactured, and you get to see it before the timeline does!
Believe it or not, I actually designed the packaging myself, which was much more difficult than I imagined. So, go hug a designer when you have a free moment, they deserve it.
In this newsletter I'll go over the process of designing a packaging label from scratch, show you an early draft compared to the final, and try to explain why on Earth I was dumb enough to try to design this myself.
The easiest part of this design was the graphic. This is a coffee bar for all people, not just NFT lovers. With this in mind, unlike our coffee beans, I didn't want to use someone's PFP as the main product image. I made the graphic in Midjourney in about 5 minutes (AI is awesome!).
I also had to consider factors like fonts, use of color, and details like underlining the word "coffee."
The colors orange and brown felt the most aesthetic and coffee-esque. Font was also made a lot easier for me when the y00ts brand released a kit with guidelines!
Is the design perfect? No. But I learned a lot in the process, and also spent zero dollars outsourcing. In these early days as a startup, every dollar matters, and I believed I could come up with a clean and simple, yet effective, package for our coffee bar.
So let me know, did I crush it, or did I take an L?
Reply with your feedback on the final packaging design!
This process has made something abundantly clear to me. To run a startup, you have to be willing to wear multiple hats. When problems arise, you can't say, "Oh, that's not my job." Everything is your job.
Packaging Design? Your job.
Contract negotiations? Your job.
Marketing? Your job. (In Web3, the community plays a pivotal role here)
To be willing to do the dirty work, you truly need to believe in yourself and your vision.
Thanks for reading, please let me know if you found this article interesting and want more building in public content!
Curtis
