Independent Coffee Review Site

Roast Critic tastes, compares and rates the most popular coffee brands in America. Its promise is on the home page: honest coffee, no fluff. I designed and built the site.

What the site has to do

A review site earns trust two ways: a rating system readers can understand at a glance, and a layout that gets out of the way of the writing. The design had to make a score legible in a card thumbnail and still hold up on a long review.

What I built

• Reviews. An index of buyer’s guides and brand reviews, organized around how people brew (pour over, cold brew, drip and French press) and why they’re buying (gifts, low acid, dark roast). Every card shows its roast level and its score.
• Head-to-head comparisons. Two brands side by side, with both bean ratings on the card so the winner is clear before you click.
• The bean scale. Ratings run from 0 to 5 beans, with partial beans for the in-between scores, across five criteria. A “How we rate” section on the home page explains them.
• Disclosure. The site states that its reviews are independent opinions, and it carries an affiliate disclosure.

Design approach

A warm cream page with a faint coffee-bean pattern, dark brown serif headlines, and one gold-brown accent for buttons and scores. It looks more like a magazine than a comparison-shopping site, which suits a site that wants to be read.

Outcome

Roast Critic is live at roastcritic.com, with a growing library of reviews and comparisons.

Visit live site

Live sites may have been modified by the client after delivery. Screens here show the original work.