Brand refresh, website & art direction for the leading software in the coffee industry, Cropster.
Cropster is a software company that provides comprehensive solutions for the coffee industry, offering tools to roasters, producers, and traders. By leveraging Cropster's technology, coffee businesses can enhance their operations, optimise quality, and make data-driven decisions to stay competitive in the market.
In my role as Art Director and Brand Designer, I led Cropster's brand refresh to better reflect the company’s evolution and expanded product offerings. With the 15th anniversary as the perfect milestone, the goal was to modernise the visual identity while retaining recognition and aligning with our broader vision.
As businesses evolve, so should their branding. Cropster's brand had remained static for over 15 years, mainly associated with the well-known Roast product. This narrow focus made it challenging to promote and differentiate our other solutions in the coffee supply chain. A refreshed brand would signal growth, highlight our full range of products, and help us stay relevant to both customers and employees.
At first glance, Cropster’s logo evolution might not seem like a radical change - but for the company, it was a significant step. Having relied on the same logo for 16 years, there was initial hesitation about making any changes at all.
The challenge for the refresh was to evolve the brand subtly enough to honour its history while creating a more versatile identity fit for modern digital applications. By refining the original leaf icon and pairing it with a clean, contemporary sans-serif font, we struck the perfect balance -retaining familiarity while giving the logo a fresh, flexible edge.
Colour played a key role in the refresh. We introduced a vibrant palette with distinct highlight colours for each product while preserving Cropster’s signature green as the unifying colour. This made it easier for customers to differentiate between solutions, while ensuring the brand remained cohesive and instantly recognisable.
To bring a human touch to the brand, we created a custom illustration style and introduced the “Cropster line,” a visual element that symbolises the journey from coffee origin to cup. This element served as a visual thread, weaving through different brand materials and tying the company’s diverse services into a unified story. Combining hand-drawn details with clean, modern illustrations gave the brand a warm yet polished feel - making it both approachable and memorable.
One of the most impactful aspects of the refresh was a full website overhaul. The new site was designed with user experience at its core -simpler navigation, playful product-specific icons, and explainer videos transformed the browsing experience. The result was a more engaging and informative platform that significantly improved user engagement.
Session duration rose from 2.7 seconds in early 2023 to 7.3 seconds by July 2024. Most importantly, conversion rates jumped from 0.92% to 3.33%, with monthly orders increasing from 168 to 233.
With Cropster celebrating its 15th anniversary, the timing for a brand refresh was perfect. The updated identity reflects where the company stands today - dynamic, innovative, and far beyond its beginnings with the Roast product - while providing a flexible foundation for future growth. The result? A brand that feels relevant, vibrant, and equipped to support Cropster’s continued leadership in coffee technology.
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