Following on from my previous blog post introducing my collection, I picked out my favourite bottles and cans and categorised them into the groups of overall design, colour, and shape.
Overall design:
These were the designs that I felt kept a strong cohesive look and feel across the packaging and that most effectively communicated either the drink itself or the company behind it.
Espresso Monster
Monster Energy's take on an espresso iced coffee interests me as they've kept their signature logo and branding central to the design as usual but they've added 1920s art deco style decoration to the type and added a flourishing border. They've also used gold foil blocking on the logo, type decoration and the word 'espresso' on a matte black finish.
All of these things communicate exclusivity and richness, which is often associated with coffee and is also commonly used in coffee adverts to sell what comes across as a 'premium' product even when it may just be instant coffee.
Sangaria Ramu Bottle
I have a few drinks containers by Sangaria, a popular drinks company from Japan. This one in particular stood out to me due to it's cartoon-ish style through the use of bold, rounded stroke borders/outlines. It also utilises playful type placed on an angle as a well as the word 'bottle' not sitting neatly on it's baseline as well as a simplifed illustration of a 'marble soda' bottle which is another interesting form of drinks bottles from Japan.
Another thing I enjoy about this bottle is the bright magenta colour used to show that the drink's flavour is grape. This particular shade, used all over the bottle, I personally think is quite beautiful and is complemented well with the blue of the bottle caps, both in the illustration and on the bottle itself.
Aqua Libra
I bought this can for it's use of pattern as a design tool rather than the illustrative approach many companies take.
Specifically, Aqua Libra uses stippling of differently scaled light blue spots to create swooping semicircles that overlap each other.
In order to finish off the whole composition, the logo and other type is aligned centrally and in dark blue. Yellow highlights are used sparingly but effectively on the name of the flavour and in 2 triangle shapes that frame the whole composition, bringing it all together.
Overall I think this design is clean, simple and beautiful to look at.
Shape:
I picked out these bottles because they stood out to me as not fitting the traditional bottle shape/form/style that you would generally find in the UK.
Fanta Grape (JPN)
An observation I've made about Fanta in Japan is that they take a different approach to the Fanta of other countries (specifically European countries) in that each flavour has a completely different bottle from the last and there is a lack of consistency that you find elsewhere. I think this topic deserves its own blog post!
In this case, Fanta have decided to shape this bottle to match the shape of grapes used as the flavour. Therefore, the bottle is fully rounded to make 3 spherical bulbs, one on top of each other. This not only remains ergonomic as it is easy to grip, but it is also thoughtfully shaped to the flavour which is not something you see often and I thought was really neat!
ÍCELANDIC GLACIAL
I very rarely buy bottled water but I made an exception for this one I found while I was on visiting the country of Iceland because of it's shape.
This bottle prominently features moulded plastic on the top half which is in the shape of a mountain, which stays very relevant to the fact this water is from Iceland, a country known for it's glacial mountain landscapes.
Coca-Cola (Tanzania)
A few years ago my mum visited Tanzania and brought back this glass Coca-Cola bottle for me. What was different about this one compared to a glass bottle found in the UK was it's unusual height. It's not easily noticeable from this photo but if you look at the picture above with all of them in a line you can see the difference compared to the others. Not only is it tall, but it is also very slim.
Another interesting thing to note that isn't to do with the bottle itself is the fact that apparently, much like many parts of Africa, Tanzania has a shortage of water and as a result, coca-cola is cheaper and more widely available there!
Colour:
Here's a collection of my favourite colours from the collection! I really like bright and colourful things so these stood out to me as really cool and the kind of thing I'd pick off the shelf at the shops if I were to see them. The colour I like the most out of these is the grapefruit Fanta can that is 3rd in from the left.
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