REX & Vida e Caffé – Designer Coffee Cup Sleeves

In a Design Indaba first, one small seed teamed up with vida e caffé to bring a unique experience to this year’s design expo, which ran from 24-26 Feb 2006. Working round the theme of ‘Home-Grown, High-End’, some of SA’s hottest design talents, including REX Creative, Circus Ninja and the one small seed design team, created unique cup sleeves that were served up, as piping hot, with each cup of coffee that vide e caffé distributed from the vida e caffé/one small seed stand at the expo. We take a look at some of the big names behind the explosively creative designs.

“In our interpretation of the theme we decided to focus on the process rather than its result. Using only what is right in front of us, to shape new meaning from it. In doing so we aimed to highlight the fascinating ability African designers have, to do so much with so little! In our view that was apt commentary on the theme ‘Home Grown & High-End’.

This left us with a white canvas and red logotype. The design solution was developed by feeding the letters from the logo-type into an on-line anagram generator until it spat out the phrase ‘fed via face’, and it was exactly the kind of happy accident we were looking for. This made new, essential interaction with the brand possible and the rest of the visual solution is pretty much self-evident. Its aim was never to de-face but rather to use the bare minimum of ingredients and lend new expression to it.”