During September of this year a Starbucks pop-up shop designed by the innovative design team of Nendo, appeared on the streets of Tokyo. The concept of the store was to compare the pleasure of reading to that of drinking coffee and the need to place the same degree of importance in choosing your coffee to that of choosing a book.

The space was designed to resemble a library with elegant curving bookshelves in pale colours, a place of relaxation in which a selection of 9 groups of colour coded ‘books’ could be found on the shelves. The 9 groups related to the choices of coffee available from a base of espresso and customers were invited to read the information on the cover of the books before making their choice then taking the book to the counter to place their order.

The covers, which also had a pop out section that could be used as the ‘Starbucks create your own tumbler’ initiative were then taken away by the customer with the coffee! A surprisingly subtle form of branding for Starbucks within a beautiful design by Nendo. The familiar Starbucks logo was barely discernible inside the ‘library’ which was in itself an extravagant gesture for a project which was only in existence for a period of three weeks!