ObjectivE:
Guide "The Soda Guy Handcrafted Beverages" from inception to a fully realized brand identity. This multifaceted project will encompass the creation of a brand, including stationary, guidelines, packaging, and advertising materials, providing an immersive exploration of the branding process.
Deliverables:
Redesign "The Soda Guy's" logo and define the brand's visual language (Optional: change the brand name)
Develop a cohesive line of advertisements and stationary products, reflecting the brand's unique identity and visual language
Craft visually stunning and functional packaging for the line of locally made sodas
Deliver a professional presentation to peers and client explaining design reasoning and showcasing visual work
"The Soda Guy Handcrafted Beverages" stands apart with its commitment to quality ingredients, local production in Indianapolis, Indiana, and the exclusion of High Fructose Corn Syrup. Design endeavors must reflect this dedication, encapsulating a sense of elegance, authenticity, and satisfaction in every visual element.
Process
I started with a market analysis, which lead me to targeting a young adult audience due to statistics about daily soda drinkers and the quickly growing younger population of Indianapolis (often called "Indy" by locals).
Throughout the branding, I chose to focus on the locality through the naming, the company's commitment to making a natural drink through the simplicity of the visuals, and the fun aspects of soda through bubbles and bright colors.
Logo creation
After initial drafts, I focused on creating a word mark that would capture Indy Pop's fun yet simple ethic. I chose blue, orange, and red for their vivid yet happy appearance. The rounded edges and flat color reflect simplicity while still being fun. Finally, the dot of the I and under the Y/exclamation point are hollowed out as an echo of soda’s bubbles and provide the basis of the bubble motif throughout the branding campaign.
Packaging Design
The bottle packaging for Indy Pop continues the bubble stream motifs through the trails around the outside of the carrier and climbing up the bottle. I chose a glass soda bottle for its classic and simple look, painted white to control the background so the bubbles and logo pop as they are supposed to.
In a later iteration, I changed the bottle packaging so that it would be reflect the overflowing affect that the bubbles create through covering the entire bottle. Additionally, by switching the bubbles to clear so that consumers can see the soda within, it better reflects the all natural sugars commitment of the company.
Stationery
The stationery harmonizes with the brand identity primarily through the continued use of flat blues, oranges, and reds and repetition of bubbles. Drawn from the two bubbles of the logo, I chose to expand that symbol into long trails of bubbles to provide a flexible motif across all elements of the brand.
Stationery Draft 1
Stationery Draft 2
Stationery Draft 3
Final Stationery
Advertising
The advertising continues the bubbly theme in both its simple flat colors and the fun of bubbles exploding everywhere. The magazine advertisement for Indianaoplis monthly engages the audience of local families and adults through the sheer number of bubbles present, which in turns draws the eye towards the white space, and Indy Pop’s logo.
Print Advertisement
Similarly, the video ad starts white and fills with bubbles to spark viewers' curiosity to see what will happen when the whole thing is filled. It is simple, but incredibly fun and engaging. Additionally, because the majority of the ad is covered in bubbles, it is an incredibly flexible component and could be used in any number of other spaces and formats, like Instagram ads.
Video Advertisement
In the end, Indy Pop is a fun yet simple branding, notable for its continuous bubble themes in blue, oranges, and reds, that make it instantly recognizable. Through simple colors on a white background it portrays itself as clean, but the vibrancy of the colors and randomness of the bubbles convey a fun side that explodes across the brand.
