Interview with Roast! West Coast

May 18

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Ryan Woldt of Roast! West Coast, a blog and podcast about coffee, based in California. We talked a lot about packaging design for the coffee industry, of which we do a lot through our partnership with Roastar. Here’s an excerpt:

R!WC: How long have you been working in design, and how did you move into packaging design?
Emily: I got my first design job while in college, working at a print shop. I was lucky to learn fair amount of pre-press skills there. After a stint at a boutique studio in Dallas, I got my first real job in San Francisco in 2007. That was a shop well known for packaging, so I got a lot of practice while there. I got to work on Coca Cola, Sprite, and even Metallica! The album I worked on was Death Magnetic, and it actually won a Grammy for Best Album Design. So you could say I got my feet wet! When I went off on my own, I knew I really enjoyed the implicit emotional content of great packaging, so I continued to hone those skills and seek out those kinds of clients when I started my own studio.
R!WC: What is your process for developing a concept that represents the ethos or mission of a brand?
Emily: There are a few angles I think about when distilling a client’s concept into a brand they can build a company with:
How is it different? Getting to the unique benefit is really, really important.
Who needs it? Speaking to that individual customer in a way they are attracted to is like design ventriloquism. I have to use my client’s voice in every aspect of the design.
What is surprising about it? I really like to find an axis of two ideas that may not usually cross paths and play with those until we have a unique mark that illustrates how the brand is different from competitors.