Mammoth Coffee Co.

About

Mammoth Coffee Company is a boutique coffee roaster based in New Orleans, LA. Founded by a husband and wife duo, Mammoth’s philosophy is to let the coffee do the talking. Their cafe is homey, modern, and inviting, and their approach to their product is always to highlight the distinctive profiles of each coffee they roast and stock.

The Project

Illustration
Merch Design

The back of a tee featuring a custom merch design for a coffee shop in New Orleans. The text reads "The coffee your parents warned you about" and "coffee" has devil horns and a tail".

Goals

The owners have an eye for good merch. They source art from indie designers and artists, locally or in their network, and always aim to carry something that’s unique and represents the brand personality. Their style tends to be cheeky, a little goofy, but executed with quality in mind. We collaborated on two different merch suites that would include apparel and a couple different styles of coffee cups.

The front side of a tee design for a NOLA based coffee roaster. It has an illustration of a skeleton in devil pajamas, similar to Max from Where the Wild Things Are. He is surrounded by flaming trees.
A custom illustration for a merch suite for an independent cafe. A pink drink cup with hand drawn typography.

Suite I

The front of a pink coffee cup with custom illustration for a merch suite. The art shows a skeleton in devil pajamas with his hands on his hips.
The back of a tee featuring a custom merch design for a coffee shop in New Orleans. The text reads "The coffee your parents warned you about" and "coffee" has devil horns and a tail".
A green camper mug with an illustration of a skeleton that looks like Max from Where the Wild Things Are.

For our first collaboration, the inspiration was Maurice Sendak’s beloved Where the Wild Things Are. The plan was to work in imagery from the story but in a style that was unique–a nod to the book, rather than imitating Sendak’s illustration style. We wanted to evoke Max’s personality, but with a more adult feel. Instead of a kid, a skeleton, and instead of Max’s beast jammies, we ended up with a little play on words: our skeleton donned satin pajamas with devil horns and a tail. Thus, Satan Pajamas became our theme.

A custom merch design for a New Orleans based coffee shop. The shirt has a small M on the breast. The M is formed by a snake, and shows a flame behind it.
A piece of custom merch designed for a coffee roaster in New Orleans, Louisiana. The artwork is the name of the company in letters made of snakes, which have flames rising from them.
Sticker and drink cup designs for a NOLA based coffee shop, featuring letters made of snakes.

Suite II

For the second suite, we wanted a simple, graphic image that would work well with the water-based inks of DTG and merge into the fabric without losing detail. The brief was simple: the business name, made of snakes, on fire. I created hand-drawn type featuring wavy letters with snake heads and tails, and the snake’s eye repeated as a motif. There were two different graphic elements: the full version of the art for the back side of the tee, and a small flaming “M” on the front for a breast detail.