Showing posts with label A History of.... Show all posts
Showing posts with label A History of.... Show all posts

Tuesday, 9 October 2012

History of... top 10 things about Coffee

1. Flat whites - Drink Preparation/ Quality



Having worked in a coffee shop for 2 years I have a little bit of knowledge on how to properly prepare and serve coffee based beverages, this is the area that most interests me about coffee, I enjoy to learn how to make drinks to the best quality I can but most of all I love to make flat whites, I think it might be the creative element to the drink or the fact that it actually takes a bit of knowledge and skill to be able to make one, there are  many baritas that are much Much better than me but I still enjoy the challenge and the surprise on peoples faces when you serve them with a good looking cup of coffee. The flat white is also in my opinion, the best tasting cup of coffee you can have (if it's made properly).

2. Design of logo for coffee shops








I often find that many coffee shops spend alot of time and money on getting a unique look that will invite customers in, and therefore alot of time is spent over the design of the branding and logo as this themes the cafe, so because of this there are many interesting and brilliant coffee logos.

3. Where the coffee can be grown





There is a specific environment coffee can be grown in and that changes the taste of beans and it also varies between the 2 separate species Arabica and Robusta, so I wanted to find out where particular beans were grown and what difference to the taste it made.

4. Coffee shop Branding


Due to the fact most coffee shops try to stand out visually there is also an opportunity for some brilliant branding for the shops, just walking down the high street you can see loads of cup designs but there are some really cool ones out there.

5. Coffee roasts


I find the fact that roasting the beans again like cooking changes the taste of the bean, I find it interesting that there are people who spend their entire careers perfecting how to roast, blend and taste coffee to keep enhancing the drink.

6. What elements are needed to make the perfect espresso based drink

Its is like a science, the barista has to judge grind, compaction, water pressure, temperature, and time in order to make the most out of the coffee, it is an art to make a good tasting cup of coffee so that's when you find one its good to stick with it because there is a lot of rubbish out there.

7. The fact coffee helped build the world as we know it today.

There were many successful, huge businesses that were founded around coffee, Lloyds of London was one of them, when first introduced to the UK it stopped people drinking beer so much and helped straighten it out a bit as it became a social event where people would gather and have intellectual conversations, it is said that the modern day newspaper was created in one of these early 'penny universities' in London.

8. Coffee as a drug

The fact coffee is actually the most widely used drug in the entire world is very interesting, it contains caffeine which is the main reason coffee became as popular as it did, caffeine acts as a stimulant which help keep concentration and energy for longer periods of time.

9. How coffee was discovered and first utilised

Finding out where coffee originated from and how it became known as a drink is brilliant, even though the story is told as a legend it is still funny to think that coffee was first discovered by a young boy watching his goats going mental after eating the berries from a coffee tree.

10. Coffee Giants

Coffee companies that have taken over the world, I wanted to find out how they did it so successfully, working for Starbucks i have learnt much about the success of the company but it seems strange that only a few really take off and cover most countries in the world.


Friday, 28 September 2012

History of Coffee // Graphic Responses

Graphic response for the History of brief.

I chose too focus my graphic response on promotional material for the London coffee festival.

3 chosen graphic responses;

Promotional poster

 

Informational publication

This informational publication contains a brief history of coffee to give the reader a basic understanding of how coffee has evolved over the centuries, it also folds out to have a full page coffee atlas showing where coffee is grown in the world and whether they grow arabica or robusta beans, it also contains a simple explanation of what the difference is between the two beans and why arabica is a better drinking bean than robusta.
 




Flyer in the form of a coffee cup sleeve

The Idea behind this flyer would be handed out to members of the public as a promotional piece for the festival, if the individual was then to bring the coffee sleeve with them then they could use it on a coffee based beverage of their choice.



A History of ... Coffee presentation and feeback

A History of Coffee Presentation 

The presentation today went very well, the fact we only had 3 minutes to get out as much information as possible about our subject made it overall quite difficult and I was bound to midd out certain elements of information that I perhaps should have. 

Visually I wanted the theme to continue from my presentation into my graphic response, this is why the sack texture was once again used. 

My presentation focused mainly on the actually history of coffee, there were many more areas that could be researched and presented in depth but I wanted to get across my main interests and what I had based my graphic response on.

  • i started with the general history, where coffee originated, who exploited it etc.
  • How and when it traveled to Europe

  •  How / when it traveled to America and what they did with it
  • The different beans that are grown

  • How a bean is processed and what difference it makes to the flavour
  • and finally and overview of how coffee based beverages are prepared and consumed in modern society.


As we were only presenting to small groups there was more specific feedback from my peers and as we were told to give both positive and negative feedback about all elements of the presentation it meant i got a good wide variety of constructive elements to learn from.


Below is the feedback I received,

- Blue - Negative
- Pink - Positive







Positive

There was a common piece of positive feedback which focused on the information I displayed in my presentation, It was well informed and I knew what I was talking about and taught people information they hadn't heard before, the presentation visually followed the theme of coffee and my graphic response

That I focused on the history of my subject which was the title of the brief.

Negative


  • I didn't show the process of creating my graphic response

This was more because I didn't have time to fit it into my presentation, I eliminated it from the presentation as i thought I would be able to explain it a little bit while I showed people.

  • involve some more of my primary / secondary research.

As I was focusing on the actually history of coffee it was a little more difficult to collect and present primary research as it was based on facts rather than statistics, I did other primary research but it was not relevant to what i was presenting.