Sketches conveying vision

In 2009, I was involved as a senior designer within the VanBerlo design team in the early concept development of the Promesso coffee machine for Douwe Egberts. At that stage, we were exploring broader social and technological trends that could influence the next generation of professional coffee systems.

One of those trends was urbanisation. A conversation with a colleague about the changing role of cities triggered a simple thought: what if a coffee machine were approached more like a building than an appliance?

Instead of organising all components within a conventional product grid, I imagined the machine as a small piece of architecture, with its own front, sides, spaces and transitions. This opened up different possibilities for accessibility and internal organisation, but also for working with light, shadow, colour, material and contrast.

I captured that idea in one concept sketch. Its value was not in describing a finished product, but in making a design vision immediately tangible. That sketch became a starting point for the subsequent development by the VanBerlo design team. Although I was not involved in that later phase, it was particularly rewarding to see how strongly the architectural character of the original concept survived in the final Promesso.

The production model developed into a distinctly asymmetric machine for professional environments, combining a strong spatial presence with intuitive touchscreen interaction and personalised coffee choices. The strength of that design vision was also recognised externally: Promesso received the Red Dot: Best of the Best in 2016.