a few weeks ago the guys from Acquired Taste Magazine – a Canadian food and lifestyle magazine – invited me to be part of #TheCoffeeProject on Instagram, which, as you may have figured out, focuses on the art of drinking coffee.

here in the west coast we totally love our coffee; on any given day you can toss a rock up in the air and chances are, you’ll hit a coffee shop.

obviously i wasn’t just going to post a picture of plain coffee, you know i had to take it to the next level, so i invited my vancouver buddy alicia carvalho to collaborate with me. she’s a talented graphic designer and lover of good type, so it was the perfect match.

together we created a series of 3 photographs for which alicia created the type, by hand, using coffee! yep, the type you see in here is either ground coffee or “coffee watercolour” (water + instant coffee). Paired up with her type, i styled the shots and well, here are the results.

three soul warming coffee recipes

triple dark coffee

this recipe is my absolute favourite, it’s the darkest of them all! it has chocolate, earl grey tea, and coffee. get a pot with enough water to make one cup of coffee. add a tea spoon of earl grey tea, a teaspoon of brown sugar, and as much coffee as you want (depending on how strong you like your cuppa). heat it up and turn off the heat as soon as it starts to simmer. add a few chunks of dark chocolate and let it melt. let it steep for a few minutes and strain it. serve with a splash of milk or leave it as is for a stronger flavour. *recipe adapted from lady and pups

sailor’s coffee

sail away to creative lands with this brew worthy of an explorer. super easy to make: make a cup of coffee and add a splash of spiced rum. done and done. if you wanna go a bit fancy, add some cinnamon! hmmm..can you feel the cozy heat?

a simple cortado

now this is something that’s kinda getting trendy in here (it’s kind of the shit in NYC), so you’ll probably see more of it later in the year. a cafe cortado is basically an espresso with a bit of warm milk. the ratio is crucial though, otherwise you’ll end up with a cafe con leche (super mild coffee with milk). i like using a 1:1 ratio of coffee and milk. to make it, start by preparing a cup of espresso, while that’s going, heat up your milk and foam it (with a machine or one of those little foamers). slowly add the milk to the espresso and voila! so good. wanna go the extra mile? add a touch of fresh ground nutmeg on top. yum!

easy, yes? ok, all this coffee talk is no good when i actually don’t have one in my hand, so, wanna go grab one?

Styling: The Artful Desperado
Typography: Alicia Carvalho