Looking Cool At The Coffee Bar

Somehow geeks and coffee have become an inseparable combination over the last few years. Coffee bars are furnished with nerds and laptops, tweeting about the inspiring brainstorms they have had with other geeks. In our 2011 trend forecast we have observed how the ubiquitous coffee bar has become a showroom for lifestyle. We also described the ‘from digital to real’ trend, and how symbols from digital culture become a huge inspiration for interventions and artworks in the physical space. Both trends merge here.

Hand-crafter Tara Sew presents little cup sleeves to use in a coffee bar. They practically help you to prevent your hands form getting too hot, but in fact their main purpose is to show fellow coffee geeks that you are a frequent coffee bar visitor. Sew shows all the different cup sleeve designs on her blog and sells them successfully on her Etsy profile. Each one of these insulators is hand-embroidered. The fabric is brown on the outside and polka-dotted on the inside. Sew has a lot of different insulator designs available at a price of 10 dollars each. These are the same size as the standard cardboard insulators we normally get at the coffee shop, and they fit one size paper cups.