COPUS and Kontrapunkt design JUNO the bakery’s cookie brand and site — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design

Since 2018, there has been a queue outside JUNO the bakery, which sits in a quiet corner of Copenhagen’s Østerbro district. Founded by Nina Schmiegelow and Emil Glaser, it is routinely named among the best bakeries in the world. With Danish Butter Cookies by JUNO the bakery, they are taking their first steps beyond the city. The cookies are handmade at JUNO’s facility in Nordvest, Copenhagen, and sold both in the bakery and through its first online shop. “For years, we wanted to make something that could travel, survive a suitcase and still taste like JUNO on the other side of the world,” Glaser tells us.

Global creative agency Kontrapunkt created the identity for both JUNO the bakery and its Danish Butter Cookies line. Copenhagen and New York-based independent brand agency COPUS designed and built the online shop with web design and development partner Tommy Campbell. The bakery wanted partners who “understood our Danish roots and, at the same time, had a global footprint and outlook,” Glaser explains. For the site, JUNO asked for “a digital home that feels like stepping into the bakery in Copenhagen.”

The bakery’s identity started with its white paper bag, “chosen for its instant recognisability in a competitive landscape defined by brown kraft paper,” details Kontrapunkt’s Creative Director Laurits Hanak. “We elevated the white paper to become the canvas of not only the bag, but of the entire brand.” Across every application, Kontrapunkt aims for “as minimal a brand presence as possible, always keeping all brand elements at an absolute minimum.”

The bakery’s mascot is “inspired by the peacock that accompanies the ancient Roman goddess Juno,” Hanak notes. Its pose is understated, reflecting “meticulous craft but never flashy.” The peacock “is not perfectly geometric in its construction, but has some small quirks here and there to reflect the hands-on approach of JUNO the bakery,” he continues, describing it as “a splash of blue against white packaging and the buttery browns of the pastries.” The brand typeface is Plantin MT Std, chosen for “its beautifully crafted curves and serifs.”

“Danish butter cookies are already a piece of Denmark people bring home, so it felt natural to make our version,” Glaser notes. The range has “classics like fresh vanilla next to cardamom and rose.” Like the bakery’s paper bag, the cookie packaging is white, with touches of blue and small illustrations that show the cookies inside in place of photographs. The illustrations were made by hand and then digitised for packaging and screens. The ambition, Hanak explains, was to make them feel “imperfect and handcrafted, a natural extension of the peacock.” Their two-colour duotone style was chosen “to achieve the level of detail needed to cover the full product range.”

“For years, guests have asked us if we ship,” Glaser tells us. “Now,” Kontrapunkt’s Hanak notes, “a digital storefront by COPUS brings the warmth of the Østerbro bakery to friends and followers everywhere.” Partner Carl Kronika wanted the site to feel like “a window into JUNO” – “something simple and clean, almost tactile.” “The goal was that you should almost smell the cardamom before you add anything to your cart,” he adds. Short films open the site and sit between the products and stories. Cut down, they also run on social media. One of them shows the morning queue outside the bakery. “Filmed quietly and without staging, it works like a living postcard that shows the bakery’s energy better than any text or image could,” Kronika notes.

Photographer Fritz Buziek shot at the bakery, at the production facility and around the neighbourhood. “The direction was warm, bright and sincere,” Kronika details. “Packshots show exactly what you get. Hands at work show the craft behind it.” Close-ups of bakes and ingredients like rose and cardamom “add natural colour to an otherwise calm palette,” he notes.

COPUS and Campbell designed the site in Figma and built it in the website builder Framer, using Framer Commerce with a Shopify integration. Framer lets the team “keep full control over the design, the typography and the small details that make the site feel like JUNO,” Kronika adds. Typography “does a lot of the work and gives the site an editorial feel, closer to a magazine than a webshop,” with “lots of white space, few elements and every detail considered.” The JUNO blue, the key colour in the brand book, is kept for the places where the team wants people to look – highlights, product tiles and the add-to-cart button. “Used sparingly, it becomes a signature rather than a background,” Kronika concludes. “It also ties the site directly to the butter cookie packaging.”