Between the late 2000s and the early 2010s, the coffee industry turned its attention to ‘craft’, elevating the beverage to a gourmet offering. When it came to brand storytelling, flavour notes, provenance and sustainability became key components. These features came to define what’s now known as ‘third-wave coffee’, which pre-dates the gamified science-infused ‘fourth-wave coffee’ movement in terms of textures and preparation.

Bettr is a South-East-Asia-based B Corp, established in 2011, and firmly situated in the third wave movement. And yet, unlike other notable third wavers (see Stumptown, Intelligentsia and Counter Culture, for example), Bettr eschews ‘cute mascots, saccharine do-gooders… utopian futures’. Because according to the company, ‘there’s a huge gap between what sustainable brands promise and the gritty reality of creating real impact’.

This statement has become the premise for the recent rebrand devised by Anak, the Singapore-based creative studio. Anak chose to focus on the less glamourous components that come with the ‘messy, difficult and thankless task’ of running a social enterprise, celebrating the imperfect by encouraging everyone to ‘scr*w perfect, make impact’.

To meet this brief, Anak built an entire fictional universe, consisting of a planet with its own characters, each dealing with a series of dilemmas specific to their personality. Beyond your run-of-the-mill mascot, each of these characters is flawed if a markedly human way: wolf-like Mervin is anxious, for example, while Debs hides self-doubt behind a veneer of self-confidence, including signifiers such as a ‘Ted-Talk stance’ and having LinkedIn Premium.

The illustration style is cartoonish, reminiscent of the work or Matt Groening, or Tison and Taylor’s Barbapapa, in a colour palette comprised of a deep brown (or perhaps ‘coffee’), a warm, sunflower yellow and a cappuccino-tinted light neutral hue. Lifestyle shots that showcase the process of harvesting beans and grinding coffee are infused with a retro filter that lowers the saturation, increases the contrast and also adds a considerable warmth.

Anak calls this a ‘story-based brand system’, where every available surface, both physical and digital, becomes a canvas to further the brand message through the characters’ stories. Capsules, packing tape and standard packages all work to showcase the branding. For the packaging system, Anak devised a two-illustration front-and-back system, with one side depicting the ‘B.C.’ scenario – here meaning ‘Before Coffee’ – while the other is labelled ‘A.D’, for ‘After Drinking’. Always, however, Anak is careful not to present coffee as a panacea – Bettr won’t deny that with or without coffee, life is still stressful.

This particular tone and visual vocabulary will strike some as delightfully retro and others as potentially cringeworthy. Turns of phrases amply borrow from viral internet memes, while the characters themselves were designed to be as ‘quirky’ as they come. It’s a style in line with what Vulture magazine called ‘Obamacore’, which we tend to associate with Millennial humour. But wherever you stand, visually, this is solid work and the characters create several opportunities for worldbuilding, and, potentially, brand expansion.