We were tasked to design the capsules’ series for Taresso Artisan Coffee Roasters, a Greek specialty coffee brand. As coffee is a communal experience that brings together different people from motley demographics and backgrounds, we emphasized on the distinct aspects of their personalities. The illustrations depict 10 different faces that you wouldn’t want to cross at an empty street at night, and were drawn as a homage to caricatures, fitting the size of the capsules. These are the Coffeeheadz, edgy and sometimes threatening, but unified by their common recognition that coffee is a special moment during one’s day. The message is plain and simple: around a coffee cup, even the most suspicious faces are becoming familiar.

The story of Taresso goes like this: The history of coffee began in Ethiopia, where the Arabica coffee tree (Coffea arabica) grew as a bush. Originally the fruit was used whole by local people, who either chewed it or ground it into small lumps. The earliest reliable reference to coffee consumption or knowledge of coffee trees appears in the mid-15th century in the monasteries of the Sufis of Yemen.

The origins of coffee and the discovery of its properties have given rise to several myths. The most important is known as the myth of the dancing goat, which attributes the discovery of the properties of coffee to an Ethiopian goatherd. Kaldi, observed that when his animals ate the fruits of the coffee plant during the day they became more active, while at night they found it difficult to sleep.