Brand Aid 8: Spilling The Beans On Caffe Nero Coffee Posters

I know that I’ll be in trouble with the ‘Design Magic Circle’ but caution be dammed… In this blog, I will reveal that in the creation of these posters to sell Coffee for Caffè Nero – absolutely NO coffee was used! (when I asked for ‘coffee to go’ I meant…)

Here’s how we got from design sketch…

to finished posters, with not a drop of coffee being used…

Right Angle were asked to launch 2 of Caffè Nero’s NEW drinks; ‘White Chocolate Mocha’ and ‘Caramelatte.’

The Photo Shoot - Past experience has taught us that food & drink photography is a bit of a pig; whipped cream, chocolate chips, caramel and hot studio lights are never a good mix, just as you’re about to capture the perfect shot, they melt into a puddle. Time for a bit of lateral thinking…

…as the espresso coffee and steamed milk would be entirely covered by whipped cream, we decided to use our creative license and not to use any at all. Instead, we cut circles of ‘fetherlite’ board to fit into the top of the mugs and form a base for the whipped cream.

The compressed gas whipped cream machine caused as much fun and games as anticipated, as did the toppings, but eventually we got some great shots of the different drinks.

We’d already taken perfect shots of the mugs with the handle to the right and the logo showing, so when photographing the whipped cream toppings, we were able to turn the mugs round to whichever angle got us the best shots.

Photo Retouching – We took an oval shaped section of the best photo for each topping and placed it directly over the perfect shots of the mug, ‘skewing’ and ‘distorting’ the images until the size and perspective matched exactly.

We then zoomed in to maximum magnification and very carefully cut out each of the 3 toppings, blending them onto the empty mugs and colour-correcting the whipped cream.

Design Concept – We presented various design concept proposals for the new drinks to establish and agree the best route forward for the project.

Initially, our brief was not to include any props on the posters and feature only the drinks. However, after the initial photo shoot, as Caffè Nero are famous for their freshly ground coffee, they asked if it would be possible to feature their coffee beans on the posters.

So, we photographed the beans separately, cut them out and added them around the base of the mugs, using shadows and effects to blend them into the final poster artworks.

The Finished Posters

After the A2 printed posters appeared in-store… and once Caffè Nero had added the missing ‘coffee’ ingredient, the drinks obviously tasted just as good as they looked, as they both very quickly sold out!

Coffee to go? You’d never know… until now!