If you run a coffee shop business, you should consider your paper cups, lids, and sleeves a part of your brand identity. After all, customers will see them frequently, so their designs should remind them of your coffee shop.
However, designing coffee cups can take a lot of time, especially if you want to impress your customers. You’ll want to know what to do, so keep reading. Everything about designing your coffee shop’s paper cups is below!
Why Does the Design of Your Coffee Shop Paper Cup Matter?
Did you know that your disposable coffee cups are advertisements for your shop? When a customer orders a coffee to go, they can bring it anywhere with them, and numerous people might see it. They probably won’t think anything of it if it’s a plan cup.
However, if your cups feature a unique design, it makes your product more memorable. Everyone who sees the coffee cup will know where it came from and might also consider stopping by your cafe.
Plus, the designs can change how a customer feels about the drink. If it’s in a generic, plain coffee cup, they won’t remember it as well later. The coffee might even taste a bit underwhelming to them because it looks boring— even if your coffee is delicious.
If your competitors use plain coffee cups, having designs on them will make your products stand out. People are likelier to choose products with designs they like since appealing designs activate our brains’ reward system.
So, your coffee cup designs matter. They can make your drinks recognizable and memorable and make your store stand apart from the competition.
How To Design Paper Cups for Your Coffee Shop
Next, you’ll need to know how to design your paper cups, including the lids and the paper sleeves. It can take a lot of effort, but the end results are well worth it.
Here’s what you need to do:
1. Create a Paper Cup Design Plan for a Coffee Shop
Before you do anything else, you’ll want to come up with a plan for your design. Before trying anything digital, working out sketches using paper and pencil will help you visualize your ideas. That way, you can see what will work best.
You’ll want to keep various aspects of your brand’s identity in mind. If you’re inconsistent, your cups will look out of place or confusing to customers. So, choose the same colors, fonts, and themes as the rest of your brand’s identity.
Consistency looks more professional and lets your designs become familiar to your customers. Plus, it even can help save time in future designs since you’ll already have an idea of what you should do.
Overall, you always need to start by creating a general design plan. It’s okay if it changes as you go or if you don’t follow it strictly. The plan should simply be there as a rough guide.
2. Create a Coffee Shop Paper Cup Graphic in a Vector Design Software
Next, you’ll need to move your images from paper to your design software. One of coffee shop owners’ most common mistakes is not using vector programs to make their graphics.
Vector graphics can scale without distorting and remain looking crisp. It doesn’t matter if you put your vector graphics on a small or large paper cup; they’ll still look the same. However, if you make rasterized designs for your mugs, they’ll become blurry when you scale them up.
So, make sure you have vector software to use for this project. These are some examples of what will work:
- Adobe Illustrator
- Inkscape
- DesignEvo
- CorelDRAW
3. Design to Fit the Shape of the Coffee Shop Cup
As you design, keep the cup’s shape in mind. You’re not making an image for flat paper— the design on the paper sleeve will bend around the curve of the cup. That means your picture will always be slightly distorted to curl around the cup.
You should avoid perfect squares, circles, and triangles because they’ll appear significantly distorted on a cup, even if they look great on your screen. Logos look great on cups, especially when they aren’t entirely symmetrical shapes because of this.
Additionally, you’ll need to consider how the text on your paper cup will look. The text will also bend, so keeping it short and simple is essential. Otherwise, it could become too difficult to read. Keeping the text large and under 10 words whenever possible is best.
Most coffee shop owners add the name of their store and a logo to their paper cup’s design. Adding too much more than that can become visually confusing.
Overall, don’t forget you’re designing for a 3D object; your final designs won’t be flat.
3. Make an Eye-catching Paper Cup Design for Your Coffee Shop
You’ll want to focus on making an eye-catching design, which is easier said than done. A bold design that stands out is better for marketing, so it’s a much better goal. People will be able to recognize it quickly, making it more appealing.
To make an eye-catching design, you’ll need to know what color you want the paper cups to be first. Then, you can use contrasting colors to form a logo that pops.
You must pick a few colors that go nicely together too. Start by selecting your brand’s primary color, then choose two more colors. You shouldn’t use more than three colors in a simple logo to help keep it consistent.
Bold designs are also more visible, so they look better to people.
4. Make More Than One Design of Coffee Shop Paper Cups
Even if you love your first design, you’ll want to consider making more than one. It becomes easier to make the next one, and you can compare the two. Multiple plans also let you choose the one that looks best on the cups.
You’ll often find that your first design doesn’t look great on the cups. You’ll learn from the experience and make a better design that bends with the curve of the cup better. Usually, it only needs a few minor changes to look stunning.
Overall, it’s essential to realize that your design isn’t set in stone. You can always make changes as you see fit throughout the entire process.
5. Order a Test Paper Cup or Sleeve for Your Coffee Shop
Many printing companies allow you to order test products before you place a bulk order, so you can see how the design will look in the real world. Take your designs and have each printed. Spend time looking them over and viewing them from close and far away.
You’ll want to choose a simple design that’s highly visible, even from a distance. Ordering a few test products lets you see how your graphics will look on the final product. It’s much better to do this now than to make an expensive bulk order and realize that you don’t like how your design looks on paper coffee cups.
In short, you’ll want to see a test product before ordering hundreds of coffee cups with your design on them.
6. Don’t Forget About the Coffee Shop Paper Cup Lid Design
Next, you won’t want to forget about the lids. Most of the time, a plain white top looks great on a disposable coffee cup. However, you’ll still need to consider how the final product will look.
You might find that a colored or clear lid looks better with your design. No matter what you choose, it should help bring more attention to the logos on the cups, so using colors from the logo’s palette helps drastically.
Some cafes that offer to-go or delivery orders also use stickers to indicate that no one touched the drink. If your shop uses them, you’ll also want to design them. Make sure the design looks nice with the rest of the cup; usually, a simple logo works best.
7. Consider Offering Different Cup Sleeves for Your Coffee Shop
While your designs must be consistent, you might consider offering different designs on paper cup sleeves for special occasions. Various designs and color schemes for the holidays or specialty drink orders can make your products stand out!
For example, many coffee shops use holiday-themed paper cup sleeves during December. You can temporarily replace your regular cup design with something more festive to increase your customer’s interest. Temporary, small changes can also make your shop feel fresh and new.
Even if you offer multiple cup sleeve designs, you’ll still need to keep everything in line with your brand identity. So, you may want to wait until you have established product designs before trying this.
Start Designing Your Coffee Shop Paper Cups Today!
The sooner you start working on design sketches, the more options you’ll have for your final product. You’ll also get to work through designs that aren’t appealing and can spend more time choosing a color scheme. Then, make sure you’re using vector programs to create the digital graphics.
To summarize, consistent, simple designs always look the best, which is true for coffee cups. You’ll want to make sure your cups look great because many people will see them when customers carry your drinks with them on the go.
