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Good coffee is an Earnest Pursuit.
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Metal tins, hand drawn illustrations, a look at New York and life’s daily vignettes. Nice for yourself, makes for a great gif.

The same wall with peach at the top, green in the middle and yellow at the bottom, repeating a four-face cycle across the frame: front, side, origin, rear. Reorder the rows and the mood changes, which is either a very flexible visual design system or evidence that the tins have opinions about their position. CPG design and branding with a panel grid that survives being cropped at both ends, by Art of Packaging, packaging design for a multi-flavor range.
Earnest Pursuit
United States
2026

Vision.

Dylan has a specific vision for the brand — lighthearted, fun, with a focus on New York.

The scope for the project was all-encompassing; naming, identity, and a wide range of branding applications.

Various packaging formats, communications, and an always evolving product line.

Client.

Earnest Pursuit sources, scores, and roasts coffee with distinct flavor profiles.

Dylan Marvin, the creator behind Earnest Pursuit, reached out based on the aesthetics of Condensed Milk and Dulce de Leche work.

Earnest Pursuit coffees are bright, accessible, delicious. Skillfully assessed and selected.
How it developed.
We focused on establishing a tone and personality to the brand, wrapping the direction onto distinct, memorable, keepsake packaging.

Identity and naming directions were explored concurrently with determining structural packaging format (there are a lot of options for coffee packaging).

Once tins were selected creative direction got tailored together with the form.  

Details.
An expressively structured typeface, set somewhat chaotically in attractive color combinations on high gloss, direct printed tins.

Hand drawn illustrations in slightly surrealistic themes, highlighting pleasant events and general mundanities of day-to-day city life.

Minimal compositions emphasizing each element.

And of course a name in pursuit of quality.
Studio take.
Have you ever picked up a vintage object?

Well made, beautifully designed, quality materials, nothing cheap, detailed inside and out, ages gracefully.

Earnest Pursuit is one of those. Give it a try.

Good coffee starts with an exhaust valve.
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The recent [at the time of project development] embedding of exhaust valves into coffee tins allowed for for a unique creative direction for Earnest Pursuit.
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All over printed tin, no paper, no plastic, no waste. One of the first in North America.

A peach tin on black with its dark, mottled lid facing the camera: a white one-way valve disc at left and a ridged screw cap at right, two fittings sharing one small plane. The front face below carries the blue wordmark and the "Let's Chill" tag, and the left face shows a QR code and a small canine. The valve exists to let gas out and the cap to let coffee out, and the layout keeps them apart so neither gets in the other's way. A lid that works, from AOFP Studio's structural packaging design.
Twelve Earnest Pursuit tins stacked four across and three high lay out every face of the wraparound label in sequence: front, narrow side, data panel and QR back, repeated in yellow, peach and green rows. Each row keeps its two-color logic, blue on yellow and peach, cream on green, so the range separates by ground color while typography and line illustration hold constant. The data panels trace origin with dashed routes from a world map to an elevation diagram. As CPG design from a packaging design studio it is unusually tidy, and a rare case of a dieline being more photogenic than the product inside it.
Thirteen Earnest Pursuit tins float at assorted angles on black around one green tin turned to its data panel, which lists "Berry-Citrus Sangria, Peach, Plum" under TASTE and "Caturra, Pink Bourbon, Geisha" under VARIETAL, beside a world map, a dashed route to a hatched Colombia, "1,600 to 2,000 meters" and the origin "Huila, Colombia". The orbiting tins show every other face, fronts, QR backs and lid tops with screw caps, so the composition works as a turntable without the turntable. Creative direction by Art of Packaging presents the specialty coffee packaging as a system to inspect from all sides.
Three tins stack yellow over peach over green at center, two more lie on their sides at left, one showing a lid with a screw cap and a small valve disc and the other a flat metal end with a round recess, and a silver pitcher and a small white cup stand at right on a white sweep. The metal ends are the only unprinted surfaces in the range, and against pastel lacquer they read as the quietly industrial counterpart to the line drawings. Art of Packaging's visual design and art direction for a New York roaster treat the bare metal as part of the palette.
A tight crop of the peach and green tins turned so the side panels face right: EARNEST PURSUIT running vertically beside "Our mission is to share coffees with distinct flavor profiles that are bright, accessible, and delicious.", with earnestpursuit.com and "Roasted in New York City" at the foot, while the fronts wrap around at left with their wordmark, line drawing and tag. The vertical wordmark is quiet where the front's is loud: same typeface, a fraction of the scale, which gives the tin two volume settings. Art of Packaging's packaging design keeps the sideways text readable at any volume.

The tins looked good.
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After the initial production run we ended up customizing the mold with an indent on the bottom of the tin, matching the cap on the top.
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Now they stack nice, look good, and shipping says thank you sincerely.

A raised view of a green Earnest Pursuit tin's bare metal end on black, with a wide circular recess pressed into one corner of an otherwise scuffed, mottled surface, and below the rim a strip of gold origin graphics: a dashed route, a star marking "Huila, Colombia" and an ELEVATION diagram. The recess is the only geometry interrupting the plane, which leaves its purpose to the imagination and its shadow to the lighting department. This is structural packaging design from AOFP Studio at its most reductive.
A two-frame animation of twenty-one Earnest Pursuit tins stacked seven wide in peach, green and yellow rows, each column showing a different face of the label: narrow side, origin panel, QR back, and the stacked wordmark front at center. Between frames the tins rotate a few degrees, so shadows and perspective shift while the grid holds, a stagger rather than a spin. As visual design, the repetition shows one label layout carrying a multi-SKU CPG coffee range by swapping ground color and ink, never structure. The motion comes from a creative studio that evidently considers a twitch sufficient choreography.
A diptych of the same Earnest Pursuit shipping box, light and dark. On the left, the white ribbed box printed in green holds three tins, yellow, green and peach, in a horizontal cutaway, with the wordmark above and below it a drawing of a bird, a mug, a cloud, an Art Deco spire and a dog peering over the horizon. On the right, on black, the box is turned to its back: the drawing moves to the top, the tins show their QR panels, and hard shafts of shadow cut the lower wordmark into fragments. AOFP Studio handled the structural packaging and the photography, and a box built for the mail turns out to have two personalities, neither of them shy.
A peach "Let's Chill" tin sits on a long white carton at a slant, hard shadow shapes cutting the grey ground behind and a second peach tin entering at lower right. The carton carries a tape strip of line-drawn canine heads, mission copy and earnestpursuit.com in small green monospace, and the wordmark running along its lower edge. The scale hierarchy is clean: large wordmark on the tin, small type on the carton, pattern on the tape. This graphic design studio gives a shipping box something to say in three registers.
A two-frame loop alternates the front and back of a peach Earnest Pursuit tin lying in an open kraft mailer. The front shows the blue wordmark and a line-drawn woman holding a mug beside a dog, tagged "Let's Chill"; the back lists "Dried Blueberry, Key Lime Pie, Chocolate, Fig" and notes that cherries are "delivered to the washing station at night to minimize fermentation", with a dashed route from a world map to "Teraga, Oromia, Ethiopia." and "2,225 meters". Warm side light and the kraft interior push the peach toward amber, an unboxing staged by a packaging design studio rather than left to a customer's kitchen counter.

Illustrations and animations were developed together with Great What Art (greatwhat.art) giving a soul to the composition.
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A little hand drawn, a little surrealistic, drives communications beyond packaging with ease... much more in development.

A sheet of hand-drawn line icons by illustrator Great What Art for the Earnest Pursuit coffee labels: four tall framed landscapes of peaks, slopes and water lines that become the elevation diagrams, a wobbly world map, a crescent moon, a single tulip in a bud vase, and a sun. The line weight is uniform and slightly unsteady, which keeps technical data from reading like a geology textbook. Art of Packaging set these drawings into the tin label system, where the frames sit beside printed altitudes and the map anchors the dashed origin routes.
Twelve small ink drawings by Great What Art, gridded four by three, sketch a coffee drinker's day for Earnest Pursuit: a hand on a mug, brewing gear with a dripper and carafe, a magnifying glass over a cup, a field of beans, a narrow tower, a tap dripping coffee, a pointy-eared dog snapping at something midair, a rainbow, a steaming bean, and dogs lost in thought bubbles. Solid black is rationed almost entirely to coffee: the liquid in the cup, the drip from the tap, the single roasted bean. For the identity, the set gives the branding studio a vocabulary of spot illustrations for packaging, cards and social.
An animated line drawing by Great What Art for Earnest Pursuit. On the left, a sharp-eared dog hides behind a newspaper next to a traffic cone and a mug, eyes shifting above the page; on the right, two framed panels split by a vertical line, a smiling man holding a cup with a dog's ears below and a giant cup of coffee with a face, slide like a pair of doors. The animation runs on minimal moves, a glance and a slide, which suits an identity that never raises its voice. The same panel pairing reappears in the outdoor work art-directed by Art of Packaging.
A full sheet of Great What Art's character vignettes for Earnest Pursuit, each perched on a single tabletop line: a woman with a mug beside a dog, a donkey eyeing a mug tied with a bow, a man resting his chin on his hand, a giant smiling mug holding a tiny cup, two mugs with handles linked into an N beside a newspaper, a steaming mug courted by a butterfly, and two window scenes with a bird and a city tower. The stacked monospaced wordmark closes the grid. These scenes front the tins, so the design studio's label system effectively casts each coffee as a character.
The Earnest Pursuit wordmark set in one widely tracked monospaced line, ringed by sixteen line-drawn heads of the same pointy-eared dog by Great What Art, seen in profile, head-on and from behind. Repetition turns the mascot into a pattern unit: the top row reads as ears and the backs of heads, the bottom row as alert profiles, a border with a mild case of surveillance. The identity design sets that loose hand line against rigid, evenly spaced capitals, a contrast the branding and packaging studio carries through tape, mailers and tins.
Three glossy green padded mailers for Earnest Pursuit, puffed like pillows and piped in cream, sit in front of two stacked peach tins. The upright mailer carries a USPS Priority Mail label above a white line drawing of the brand's dog with a thought bubble and the stacked wordmark; the others show the wordmark large over a smaller text block. Saturated green turns a shipping bag into a brand surface, and keeping the foreground soft leaves the tins crisp. The e-commerce packaging and art direction are AOFP Studio's, on the evident belief that postage deserves good typography too.
Three pairs of hang tags lie in a row on white, front and back of each: green "All Set", peach "Let's Chill" and yellow "The Match". Every front carries the wordmark, a line drawing and a flavor tag; every back is a left-aligned spec sheet of taste, producer, origin, varietal, process, elevation and score, with a punched hole in each upper corner. Fronts do the persuading, backs do the paperwork. The edge of a silver pitcher and its shadow enter at top right, the only prop with ambition. The hang tags are graphic design from Art of Packaging for a New York roaster.
Two out-of-home applications for the Earnest Pursuit launch. Left, a painted wall ad on a brick building above a Lafayette street sign shows the wordmark beside two panels, a man holding a cup and a smiling mug, over "earnestpursuit.com" and "Roasted in New York City". Right, a bus-shelter poster on a tree-lined street, a yellow cab passing, sets the stacked wordmark over the mission line and a reclining line figure tossing a cup skyward. Art of Packaging's creative direction shows the thin green line surviving at street scale, which is not a given for drawings this delicate.
Photographed by Adeline Artistry in low, raking sun: an Earnest Pursuit keychain, a green enamel tag with gold-toned outlines shaping the dog's head beside the stacked wordmark, clipped to a black leather wristlet on an oak table next to a black cup of milky coffee with a spoon resting on its saucer. The tag converts the line-drawn mascot into a hard silhouette with metal edges, a sensible edit for an object that lives in pockets. The keychain is merchandise from the identity AOFP Studio built, and the shadows suggest it was left on the table for exactly this long.
Three Earnest Pursuit tins lined up on a wooden counter against white shiplap, photographed by Adeline Artistry as a broad diagonal of sun cuts across wall and wood. Left to right, green "All Set", yellow "The Match" and peach "Let's Chill" each pair the wordmark with a character drawing and tasting line, such as "Berry and citrus sangria. Scores 86.5. We call it". In warm daylight the peach drifts toward blush and the yellow toward butter, a reminder that a print color spec is a negotiation with the sun. The range's packaging design, by Art of Packaging, keeps its type and line work legible through it.
A green corduroy cap with a small embroidered line drawing of the Earnest Pursuit dog hangs from a white chair in a sunlit kitchen, above a table holding an open notebook, colored pencils and a white cup of black coffee. Behind, a green package sits out of focus on the counter near a framed print leaning against brick. Photography is by Adeline Artistry; the cap belongs to merchandise in the identity designed by a packaging and branding studio. The composition puts the merch in the lead and the coffee in a supporting role, an order most roasters would quietly dispute.

Illustration.

Great What Art ↗

Buy THE coffee from.

Earnest Pursuit ↗

3D Rendering.

Delicate Vacuum ↗

Better than anything studio is going to write...
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An unedited perspective on brand and design process from Dylan Marvin, the founder of Earnest Pursuit.

What lies at the heart of your packaging design?
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‍What lies at the heart of the Earnest Pursuit packaging is the same thing that lies at the heart of the brand. We love specialty coffee. We also know it is a crowded market, and that selling excellent coffee is only part of the job. We wanted to be different in how the coffee arrives and in how we talk about it. And we wanted the whole thing to be light on its feet, because there is enough seriousness in coffee already. The packaging comes out of that.

‍If you like it then you gotta put a tin on it.
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‍Specialty coffee has mostly settled on a bag with a valve and a label, or a box with a bag with a valve and a label inside it. There is beautiful and genuinely funny work being done on those bags. But it means the category is competing on one printed panel of the same object, and we wanted a container that looked like a different decision from across the room.

In American coffee, the tin belongs to Folgers and Café Bustelo. It is the thing on a grocery shelf or a grandparent’s counter. It is not what the top of specialty reaches for.

We think that is an accident of history rather than a judgment on the format. Metal blocks light, holds its shape, ships well, takes print, and lasts for years. It ended up where it did because of who got there first.

So we moved it up the shelf. Worth being clear about how, because there are two ways to use a format like this. One is ironic, where the joke is that it is cheap and everyone is in on it. We are not doing that. Irony has a shelf life and we would like these tins to be around longer than the joke would be. Metal is not a better container for coffee than a well-made bag, and we would not claim it is. It is at least as good on everything that matters, which is the whole argument: if the format is equal on the merits and lower in the hierarchy, then its position is inherited rather than earned, and there is nothing clever about moving it. We treated the tin as a straightforward choice, not a knowing one.

There is a commercial reason we wanted this rather than something heavier and more obviously expensive. Specialty coffee can be intimidating, and its packaging is part of why. A tin is a shape everybody already knows how to pick up. We are selling bright, accessible, delicious coffee, and a container with no attitude does more for that than embossing ever would.

‍The object.
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‍Flat rectangular metal, silver screw cap, 300g, with a standard one-way valve inside. The valve is nothing special, but it is what makes this a working coffee container rather than a nostalgic one. The flat rectangular shape was a design call, not a shipping call. It sits closer to a book than a can, which is what pulls it away from the grocery aisle. The surface is gloss, which suits metal and keeps the colors saturated.

There are no labels anywhere. Everything, including the wordmark, the illustration, the tasting notes and all the origin data, prints straight onto the metal in one color pairing per SKU. This is the decision that does the most work. A label always looks like something added to a container later. A printed tin is one made thing, and you can feel the difference before you can explain it.

The wordmark is set in Rational TW. We went monospace because it stays legible at the size and contrast that printing on formed metal actually allows, where a lot of display faces fall apart. Every front face runs the same three zones: wordmark, illustration, tasting note badge.

The illustrations are how you tell the coffees apart. Each one is bespoke, drawn from a small recurring cast built around a Doberman with an unreasonably optimistic inner life. One line drawing per coffee, drawn by hand, kept simple enough to survive the print and to stay underneath the type instead of shouting over it. They are not about coffee. They are about ordinary New York: somebody reading with a cup, a bird, a person lying back with a drink and a bike nearby. Closer to a New Yorker cartoon than a farm photograph. Metal on its own can feel cold, and the drawings are what keep the object friendly.

The back is where we let the nerdiness out. Producer, variety, process, elevation. Broadly the same categories every good coffee lists, so the difference is not how much is in there. It is how far we go on process, which is the part most packaging reduces to a single word and which does more to explain what you are about to taste than anything else on the panel, and it is that the geography is drawn rather than stated. A hand-drawn map with a dotted line from the farm to New York, and a small elevation diagram beside it. Origin is usually a place name in small type. We made it something you actually look at, which is illustration doing information work rather than decoration. Everything sits in the same positions in the same order on every SKU, so by your third tin you know where to look without thinking about it. The cupping score is on there, last and small. Price is a poor proxy for quality in coffee and we wanted the number available, but leading with it would be like opening a conversation with your SAT results.

‍Getting it printed.
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‍Two full sample runs before we would sign off, which pushed the launch back by months. We could have accepted the first round and been on shelf sooner. We did not, and we have decided to call that discipline rather than stubbornness.

The problem was color. We had specified the palette in Pantone and the manufacturer could not hit those references reliably on metal. Rather than accept a near miss, the colors were re-specified in CMYK and matched from there, which is what finally held. Type needed work over the same rounds. Fine letterforms behave differently on printed metal than they do on paper, and some settings had to be adjusted before they held their shape at the sizes we wanted.

The illustrations came back clean on the first proof, which was the result of drawing them for the process rather than fixing them afterwards. Line weights were built to survive direct printing from the start, so nothing broke up, nothing filled in, and nothing had to be redrawn.

Registration held. The press runs tight enough that the type and the illustrations sit exactly where they should against the color field, across every SKU and across the run, which is the thing most likely to go wrong when you print onto formed metal instead of applying a label.

One detail we will point out because nobody notices it, which is rather the point. The table line in each drawing is very slightly curved rather than true. Everything around it is rigid: fixed zones, repeated type, the same structure on every SKU. That one line is drawn a little loose on purpose, and it is what keeps the front face from feeling like a form.

‍Color.
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‍Three coffees are live and each gets a whole field to itself: yellow, green, pink. The cheaper approach is one base color with a different accent per coffee, and most ranges use it. We went the other way so the coffees read as separate products rather than three versions of one thing, and because a set of tins that do not match is more fun to collect than a set that does. The fixed layout is what stops that from turning into chaos, and it means a fourth coffee can join without a redesign.

‍What happens after the coffee.
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‍A specialty coffee bag is a multi-layer laminate. It cannot really be recycled and it reaches the bin about three weeks after purchase, which is a strange thing for an industry that thinks carefully about everything else.

Our goal is that people like these enough to keep them. We drew the illustrations for a shelf and we tell customers to hang onto the tin, and refill bags are coming, which makes the tin the durable half of the system and shrinks the disposable half to almost nothing. There is a commercial argument here too, and we will admit to it: a bag disappears in three weeks, while a tin sits on a counter with the wordmark facing out for a year. Packaging that outlives what was in it beats packaging made from a technically recyclable material that still gets thrown out on schedule.
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