Fire Lily Coffee
Designer | Student Work Agency of Portland State University School of Business : Kate Kolakowski, Niik Ingram, Erik Hernandez Juan, Anand Kailasam, Pema Thangzur
Location | Portland, Oregon
Launch Date | October 17th, 2025
Fire Lily Coffee’s design is rooted in one conviction: if the coffee is 100% Kenyan, the brand should look and feel Kenyan too: bold, unapologetic, and impossible to ignore. Founder Francis Kungu grew up in Kenya witnessing the disconnect between the farmers who do the work and the value created downstream. After moving to the U.S., he and his partner Maya founded Fire Lily to reimagine the trade cycle through radical transparency and authentic storytelling. That philosophy demanded more than ethical sourcing. It demanded a visual identity that looked the part.
As a Certified B Corp specializing in 100% single-origin Kenyan coffee, Fire Lily operates through a vertically integrated supply chain with direct farmer partnerships. Our design mirrors that clarity and conviction. Loud color, assertive typography, and confident composition reject the muted, nostalgic aesthetic that dominates specialty coffee packaging. We chose visibility over subtlety because invisibility has never served farmers.
Fire Lily’s materials, form, and color are deliberate acts of storytelling and stewardship. Inspired by Nairobi street art and the maximalist energy of Kenyan textiles, the color palette centers on vivid Kenyan Gloriosa reds and sunlit yellows balanced with Portland-rooted blue hues that celebrate resilience, warmth, and energy standing out in a crowd.
The fiery logo and passport-stamp typography emphasize passion, journey and provenance; the multicolored pattern, a contemporary riff on kanga textiles, visually anchors the brand in Kenyan culture and community. At the heart of the bag is the Gloriosa rothschildiana. It is the ultimate symbol of Fire Lily’s resilience: a brand designed to flourish within—and despite—the weight of post-colonial regulations and changing economies.
