Covid Coffee Collective
Idea and Artifact

The Figure Team has lived and worked in downtown Salt Lake for many years, and over that time we have had the pleasure of getting to know many of the baristas and shop owners who make this city’s coffee scene what it is. In March 2020, when the world withdrew into lockdown, we watched as many of our favorite shops closed their doors, and felt compelled to support the people who’ve fueled our work for so many years. Our answer was Salt Lake Barista Stimulus, a platform that enabled the Salt Lake coffee community to support their favorite baristas and shops during the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Reflecting the digital realities of lockdown, Barista Stimulus provided a web based platform to share updates on shop closures, facilitate direct donations via Venmo, and provide Covid-19 related resources — all wrapped in the bow of internet culture, memes, and bad puns.

Punchy large type and simple monochromatic palette provided a system flexible enough to support the organized chaos of internet culture, while still communicating clearly across print, web, and social.

While providing financial support (totaling in over $2,200 in direct person-to-person donations) was the project’s primary goal, we also aimed to bring levity to a challenging time, riffing off meme and internet culture while channelling our innermost Bermuda short wearing, dad joke telling selves.