London Coffee Roasters

Visual Design · Figma · 2026

A visual design project for my MA at Birkbeck. The brief was to design a mobile-first app and design system for a specialty coffee brand. I called it Accidental Coffee Roasters.

The Direction

I wanted it to feel like a brand that's been around for a while but still has taste. The reference I kept coming back to was Wes Anderson — very specific colours, symmetrical layouts, typography that feels picked rather than defaulted to.

The palette is nine pastel colours, the kind you'd find on vintage packaging or a hand-printed menu. Nothing loud.

Type System

Three typefaces, each with a job:

• Playfair Display Italic — display headings, the emotional tone of the brand
• Josefin Sans — clean and geometric for labels and navigation
• Courier Prime Italic — tasting notes and detail copy, gives it a slightly worn, handwritten feel

Design System

Built on an 8pt grid with reusable components for cards, tags, product listings, and navigation. I produced three high-fidelity screens: the home feed, a single origin product page, and a roaster profile.

Everything was built in Figma with auto-layout and variants, so it could realistically scale.

Reflection

Working with a fixed palette and only three typefaces forced every decision to feel deliberate. I actually enjoyed the constraint.

It also made me think about the gap between designing something that looks good and designing something that works. Specialty coffee already comes with strong aesthetic expectations. The challenge was meeting those without just doing the usual "artisan brand" thing.