You may have noticed that everything is looking a little bit different at Hermanos. Over the past seven months, we’ve been working hard behind the scenes to hone our branding and enhance it to better convey our values and our mission. What we are sharing with the world today is the result of a lot of late nights, heated discussions amongst our team, and a whole lot of hard work.
Why We Took the Plunge and Rebranded
We’ve been expanding at a pretty fast rate over the past few years and were seeing unique opportunities to showcase coffee from farms of all sizes and from all regions of Colombia. Our brand and our core values need to match up to the level of quality that you see in our coffee beans. In other words, it was the right time to take Hermanos to the next level, and begin to more accurately express who we are and why we do what we do.
There are always a million things going on behind the scenes at Hermanos when it comes to sourcing new beans, visiting Colombia, and learning about our farmers’ stories. We have a duty to communicate that with the people who love our coffee as best we can, and make sure as many people as possible are aware of the amazing coffee producers behind the beans.
The brand refresh is something that we have wanted to do for a long time, and we finally felt in a position to give it our all and bring Colombia to more of the world!
The Inspiration Behind the Brand Refresh
When we sat down to begin planning this change, we had to think about the pillars behind what we do. Who are we, what are our commitments, what do we want to communicate? From this, our brand values, which inform every aspect of Hermanos, came to life.
Bringing Colombia to the World
Our heritage is an integral part of who we are. Santiago, Victor, and Adnan started Hermanos with a shared passion for Colombia and specialty coffee. From today onwards, we are focused on bringing the warmth, vibrance, and knowledge of Colombia to the world. To do this, we will ensure that the way in which we communicate is authentic and respectful of our culture.
Caring for our Environments and Communities
It’s important to protect and maintain the people and places that allow us to follow our passion. Hermanos are constantly striving for ways to support farmers and communities by rewarding those for the work they put in. We have made a commitment to get to know the people behind production, making sure investment goes to where it matters.
Taking pride in what we create
We are trained in the art of coffee roasting and brewing, and yet our farmers and partners constantly provide us with new learnings. We appreciate the deep coffee traditions and constant innovation at the core of many different Colombian communities, and it is our responsibility to maintain a high level of quality and practice in respect of this.
The Use of Shapes and Colour
If you are from or have visited Colombia, you will know that it is a country renowned for its vibrancy and colour. It was essential for us to communicate this in every facet of the brand – from the shops to the social media to the coffee bags.
You’ll notice some interesting shapes on our bags of coffee, and we’re excited to share the story behind them. To create the shapes, inspiration was taken from art, textiles, design, and architecture to develop a categorisation system, used to represent the different regions that we source our beans from. For example, the shape used to represent the region of Tolima is developed from the architecture of favelas.
Colour is essential to the Hermanos brand, and so we worked to develop a palette that we felt represents the Colombian spirit. The blues, oranges, reds, purples, pinks, and greens all reflect both the landscape and culture of the country.
Applying Our Values to Our Shops
We have always thought of each of our locations as little slices of Colombia, in their own unique ways. We’ve popped up in some of the most iconic locations across London, such as Portobello Road and Columbia Road, and have still managed to make our mark and share Colombian culture with so many of you.
We didn’t want to lose this part of our personality, but we did want to grow and better communicate our values. Therefore, you’ll see that each of our nine shops are now all completely different colours, each representing a different aspect of the culture of Colombia. Barnes is orange and yellow, The Gantry is brown and pink, Kings Cross is pink and red, and so on. We have never shied away from using colour, and we hope you love this new look as much as we do.
Our New Product Range
As well as refreshing our existing coffee bags, we’ll also be sharing some new products with you. From today onwards, you’ll be able to purchase our Coffee Tasting Kit, which is now in new packaging and includes 6 bags of coffee, and 3 new bundles: the Espresso Bundle, Discover Colombia Bundle, and the Rare & Exotic Bundle.
These new bundles were designed with our audience in mind. So many of you ask our team daily which beans are most suitable for espresso, which are best for beginners to the world of Colombian coffee, which are the rarest…so we’ve hand selected beans from our ever-growing collection and made it easier for you to choose.
Bringing the Brand to London Coffee Festival
What better place to showcase our brand refresh than at the 2023 London Coffee Festival? It’s our first time participating in the festival, and we couldn’t be more excited. You’ll find us there every day, serving up delicious single-origin Colombian specialty coffee, hosting coffee tastings, and screening some never-seen-before footage from our origin trips to Colombia.
Concluding Thoughts
The whole rebranding process has been a real labour of love to all involved. We’d like to say a special thank you to Fellow Studio, who have done an incredible job of bringing our vision for Hermanos to life, and to The Narrative, for working on bringing each of our shops up to date.
You can visit our website, our social media (Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, or Facebook), or any of our nine locations to find out more about the brand refresh.