Campos Coffee on connecting with its local communities and using artistic channels to tell the stories of the people who contribute to Australian coffee culture.
The coffee and creative worlds often overlap. Cafés can be a source of inspiration, a place to focus the mind, and a supportive community for artists and creatives, while many coffee companies love to push the boundaries of branding and experiment with design to reflect their innovative nature.
This creative inclination is ingrained in Australian coffee culture. Campos Coffee, a specialty roaster that’s been at the heart of the scene for more than 20 years, has always leaned into this merging of worlds. From its beautifully designed flagship cafés to its experimental limited-edition coffees, collaboration with tastemakers, innovators, and trailblazers is the golden thread that runs through everything the Sydney-based roaster produces.
“At Campos, we love working with talented artists across a number of different projects, whether it be packaging design, barista uniforms, or limited-edition products. It’s a great way to celebrate the connection between the art and coffee communities,” says Sarah Ansell, Head of Marketing at Campos.
A Campos Christmas
The roaster’s latest collaborative project is one that many café owners and coffee drinkers across Australia anticipate each year. From the start of November, Campos Coffee takeaway cups and its signature Superior Blend are adorned with festive illustrations to add a touch of Australian Christmas spirit.
“Each year, we partner with a different Australian artist to design our Christmas packaging. It’s become an annual tradition our café partners and their customers look forward to seeing each year,” Sarah says.
“We love that Campos can spread some festive cheer while also supporting local artists. Our flagship and partner cafés are the heart of communities, a place for people to meet and connect. Artists often reflect their local communities in their work, so these collaborative projects feel like we’re closing the loop.”
For the Christmas 2024 designs, Campos has teamed up with Victorian illustrator and designer Eirian Chapman. Her brief was simple: to produce a series of illustrations that represent “what Christmas means to you”.
“I got an email from Alex McKendrick, Campos’ Creative Director, who said he’d seen an illustration I’d created of a ‘bogan angel’ drinking a can of Victoria Bitter. He liked my cheeky style and asked if I wanted to partner for this year’s Christmas packaging,” says Eirian.
“My work is colourful and graphic, and there’s lots of symbolism and humour. My illustrations often have layers of meaning and I love to reference pop culture, music, art, and films I watched in my teens.”
Eirian says the inspiration for her festive illustrations came from her family experiences around the Christmas table.
“I wanted to riff on the hectic Australian Christmas, where lunch almost turns into a food fight. Emotions are heightened, everyone’s buzzing from the coffee, and there’s just a touch of chaos,” she says.
Her creative process starts with sketching designs by hand before moving to Adobe Illustrator to add colour. She ran her initial thoughts past the Campos team, who immediately loved her tongue-in-cheek characters.
“There’s a gingerbread man with a mullet, a labrador with a candy cane in its mouth, and a barista wearing a Santa apron,” she says.
“As it’s a Christmas table, there are also lots of food references, so I dived into some retro 1970s cookbooks for inspiration. There’s a flying pavlova, a cake with tinned pineapple slices, and some coffee-themed items such as a chocolate croissant and an espresso martini champagne tower.”
It was easy for Sarah, Alex, and the team to love Eirian’s designs, but it was their authentically Aussie nature that made them a resounding hit.
“The first time we saw her sketches we instantly fell in love. There’s so much going on that every time you look you spot something new. It sparked conversation among the team about what our family Christmases are like, and we hope that will happen in the cafés when baristas hand the cups to their customers,” says Sarah.
“Christmas in Australia is very different from many other places in the world, but we still often see images of snow-capped mountains and roaring fires. What we loved about Eirian’s ideas were how iconically Australian they were.”
Artist in residence
As part of the brand’s collaboration with Eirian, alongside the festive packaging Campos is showcasing her work at its South Yarra flagship café in Melbourne. The exhibition features a selection of her paintings and prints, inspired by the Bass Coast in Gippsland, eastern Victoria, where she lives.
“While the series is inspired by nature, the pieces are bold, colourful, and cheeky. I hope they make people smile,” she says.
“A lot of my day-to-day work is commercial, collaborative projects with brands, so it’s quite different for me to have complete free rein. It can be a bit scary, but it’s fun to try new mediums and get my art in front of more people.”
Eirian’s six-month artist residency runs until February 2025, when a new exhibition will be revealed. The Chapel Street venue has hosted local artwork since it was established in 2022, which is something Sarah says the brand hopes to do more of in the future.
“Our artist in residence program started in Chapel Street. When we were designing the space, we wanted it to be embedded in its local community – somewhere people can gather, connect, and feel inspired. The exhibition spaces are also made available for local creative groups to use,” she says.
Art meets environment
While Campos partners with illustrators annually for its Christmas packaging, in early 2024 the brand teamed up with Australian botanical artist Adriana Picker to create a limited-edition native floral design. The artwork marked the roaster’s move to home-compostable takeaway cups, which replaced its industrially compostable cups, and was rolled out across its fleet of cafés and café partners.
The company acknowledges that the Australian Certified (AS 5810) Home Compostable takeaway cups aren’t the perfect solution, but says they are a step in the right direction.
The certification means the cups are suitable to dispose of in a well-managed home compost bin with the ideal compostable environment conditions.
“We are really proud to have taken this step. Every year, we see millions of Australians enjoying Campos in the iconic takeaway cup, so for us to be able to keep moving forward on our journey of becoming more sustainable as a brand is very important,” says Sarah.
Campos worked closely with supplier BioPak to be one of the first brands in the market to launch a product in-line with the new Australian certification standards when they were approved in early 2024.
“Cafés want to play a role in creating a more sustainable future. For us as a brand, it was important to help them on the journey and providing home compostable cups is one of the solutions,” she says.
“To mark the milestone, we partnered with Adriana who produced beautiful designs depicting native Australian flora.”
Sarah says that partnering with artists such as Eirian and Adriana is part of Campos’ ambition to share the stories of the people behind its products.
“The heart and soul of the brand is the people in the Campos community. Whether it’s our coffee farmers, sourcing team, roasters, baristas, or café partners, everyone who touches the brand from crop to cup makes it what it is,” she says.
“Coffee is such an emotive, exciting industry to work in that everyone has amazing stories to tell – tales of passion, overcoming hardship, or just the dedication of the community. For a brand that owes its success to its people, being able to share those stories is really important.”
Last year, some of the Campos team travelled to Colombia to visit their producing partners. They witnessed firsthand the positive impact the roaster makes to the farmers’ lives and their families, which Sarah says was one of the most heartwarming experiences of her career.
“We left completely in awe of the people we met. The team visited specifically to connect and capture these stories because they’re incredibly inspiring,” she says.
“Through the images and videos we collected, we were able to share their stories with the people who drink their coffee and the baristas who prepare it. This material brings our sourcing principles to life and shares the positive impacts our café partners are having on the lives of those at origin.”
The team have more exciting collaborative projects and trips in the pipeline, including the expansion of its Lab Series of experimental coffees.
“I’m so proud of everything we’ve achieved,” she says, “through collaborating with talented artists, like-minded brands, and producers at origin who are daring to do something different.”
For more information, visit camposcoffee.com
This article appears in the December 2024 edition of BeanScene. Subscribe HERE.
