My journey with coffee began when my parents nearly bought a café. They saw it as their chance to invest their hard-earned money into something lasting, a family business where my siblings and I could one day work together. The deal fell through, but the feeling stayed with me.
A few years later, I got my first job at my uncle’s café, Choco Churro, a Spanish donut shop with stores scattered across Melbourne’s shopping centres and Flinders Street Station. Before I was allowed near the churro machine, I had to learn how to make coffee. That was my initiation into a whole new world.
Not long after, my older brother asked me to help him cut out images on Photoshop. He paid me a little for it, marking my first step into graphic design. I didn’t realise it at the time, but those two worlds, coffee and design, would eventually meet again in a way that would shape my career.
Three years after that first café job, I found myself frying chicken nuggets at a kids’ play centre, flipping burgers at Hungry Jack’s, and wondering what came next. At seventeen, I decided to drop out of school and start a clothing label with my friends. It was a wild, all-in decision. I’d watched a short video about Jeff Staple, the designer behind the NYC Pigeon Dunk, who dropped out to chase his dream. In hindsight, I probably should have sought better advice than a six-minute YouTube clip, but at the time, it was the only reassurance I needed to believe in myself and my ability to create.
The leap paid off. Before I turned eighteen, I had designed for Budweiser Jansport USA, and even hip-hop legend Kurtis Blow. In my eyes, I’d made the right call. I felt like I was fast-tracking my way into the design history books.
When it came time to work on a new collection, I wanted to reconnect with my roots. I thought of a logo I’d seen as a kid, the elegant script of Genovese Coffee, printed on a sticker at the café my parents almost bought. I decided to pay homage to it. We sold more than five hundred T-shirts with that design, and it felt as though life had come full circle. That small tribute gave something back to me that I didn’t even know I’d lost.
A few years later, my business partner and I needed a studio space for our work, somewhere to design, store inventory, and shoot products. We found a spot in Brunswick East, just off Moreland Road. Before we even stepped inside, I noticed the Genovese Coffee roasting factory across the street. That was it. I knew this was the place. We stayed there for several years, growing our brand, taking our first meetings with distributors from Japan and Hong Kong, and shaping what would become a defining chapter of our story.
By 2018, the brand had run its course. We decided to take everything we’d learned and apply it to our own careers. My business partner went into freelance marketing, and I started my own design practice, Another Good Studio.
Around that time, a close friend of mine from Melbourne had just returned to Japan after his visa ended. A few months later, I flew to Osaka to visit him and a few other friends who had moved there. We spent most of our time at his local coffee shop, Streamer Coffee, which quickly became our meeting place.
While I was there, I started planning an exhibition and a collaboration T-shirt with Streamer Coffee for my next visit. Five months later, my wife and I returned to Japan for our honeymoon. On the second-to-last night of our trip, we hosted that exhibition. The T-shirt sold out, and Streamer Coffee went one step further, producing a three-way collaboration coffee glass with Almond Breeze, Streamer Coffee, and my studio. It was more than I ever could have imagined.
When I got back to Melbourne, I felt deeply inspired. The studio now had its first international collaboration, and for the first time, it felt like everything I’d worked toward was connecting.
Then came an email from Emilio Genovese, son of the Genovese Coffee CEO. He had seen my work with Streamer Coffee and wanted me to paint a show car for their brand, a tradition they continued at coffee events and car shows. That moment felt surreal, as if inspiration had turned into manifestation. The design that started as a childhood memory had now come full circle.
Around the same time, VICE reached out about a project that would feature me as a sign painter and designer for an eyewear brand collaboration. It was perfect timing, I was about to start painting signs for a drive-thru café called Bean & Gone, and I had the Genovese show car project happening at the same time. Those experiences became a highlight of my career. They opened doors I never expected, gave me credibility I didn’t even know I needed, and reminded me how far the journey had taken me.
By the end of that year, Genovese’s marketing team reached out again to help with a product launch. I said yes, even though I had no idea how to manage the full scope of the project. I handled the branding, photography, video, web, and social media, my first true full-service job. That project led to more work with Locale Coffee, a partner brand, designing T-shirts and coffee blend labels. From there, things grew naturally. Coffee branding, packaging, and merchandise became a core part of what I did.
In late 2019, I started working with a client in Los Angeles on a skincare brand. He mentioned that several of his friends also needed design work, so I booked a flight and went for five days. I hustled nonstop, painting, designing, and meeting people. On the second-to-last day, we drove past Virgil Normal, a lifestyle store I’d seen online for years. Out front was a small coffee cart called Mellow Coffee. The team loved my work and asked if I could paint their sign, they could only afford $200 and a meal. I said yes.
We ate burgers on the hood of a Mustang outside Disney Studios while the paint dried. That small project became one of the best opportunities of the trip. The mural went on to appear at events, stores, and parties across LA.
Since then, I’ve worked with many coffee brands, creating a sub-brand called Serious Coffee for Roasting Warehouse, merchandise for Rumble Coffee’s ten-year anniversary, labels and packaging for Locale Coffee’s collaboration at the 2024 Beijing Olympics, and design work for Rosso Coffee.
Now the smell of coffee is a little more than a morning ritual, it’s a reminder of how i got started into the world of design.
