Back in the early 00s – the era when arguably Hollyoaks was at its zenith, and bellybutton piercings their most bejeweled – Botox was gradually emerging from the hushed clinics of Harley Street and LA to become part of common parlance. As such, brands cottoned on to the word’s ‘eternal youth’ connotations: I distinctly remember a shampoo ad promising that...
Running a design blog sharpens your eye for category conventions. Stick with it long enough, though, and you’ll start to see those conventions unravel. What once felt fixed begins to flex. This creates a challenge for writing about design: you’re constantly assessing the landscape, but that landscape is always shifting. Take minimalism, for example. Once the dominant aesthetic of the...
Long gone are the days when ‘energy drink’ connoted unwashed teenage gamers, amped up Twitch streamers, hungover/still going city boys on the Tube, or 2-4-1 deals on vodka Red Bull in sticky-floored suburban student nightclubs. Like many things – such as reading books, going for a walk, or having a bath – the energy drink sphere has now collided with...
In case you’ve missed it, low and no-alcohol drinks are a thing. With over 20% of adults in the UK claiming to be teetotal, abstinence is cool: Brewdog is now Punk AF (that’s ‘alcohol free’), Thomson & Scott’s Noughty is (fairly) nice, and Seedlip is sexy. This sobriety revolution is driven, in part, by the mindfully sceptical Gen Z, turned...
Yes You Can is a non-alcoholic ready-to-drink range developed by former Olympic athlete Tyler Martin. It exists in the growing direct-to-consumer space alongside more traditional channels of distribution that includes major liquor retailers across Australia. Yes You Can launched with three products aimed at a young ‘social “seltzer” crowd’ looking for healthy and sophisticated alternatives to other ready-to-drink products. Helping...
StrangeLove is an Australian soft drinks brand that began with a four flavour range of energy drinks. Although mass-produced, each of these was created with the intention of evoking a taste of the homemade through carefully sourced and high-quality organic ingredients. The range was developed in response to energy drink brands who StrangeLove believed had failed to live up to their...
Superfly is a limited edition non-alcoholic cocktail, and collaboration between celebrated mixologist Ryan Chetiyawardana, aka Mr Lyan, and naturally revitalising UK juice drink brand Firefly. The cocktail blends redcurrents, aronia berries and grapefruit with botanicals that include green coffee, angelica, wormwood, kola nut and cascara. It features a unique packaging design by London-based B&B Studio that wraps Firefly’s distinctive structural design with...
UK based Unoco works with a community of smallholders in the Philippines to produce an unrefined, unpasteurised and untreated raw coconut water. This is drawn from young coconuts, characterised by their green rather than brown colour, picked at their nutritional prime and placed into bottles rather than tetra pak or cans using HPP. This process gives the water a distinctive pink colour, a result...
StrangeLove is an Australian energy drink creator with a four flavour range made up of Ginger Beer, Blood Orange & Chilli, Smoked Cola and Bitter Grapefruit. Although mass-produced, each variety has been crafted to taste homemade using high quality organic ingredients, and developed in response to other energy drink brands who have failed to live up to their premium positioning. Keen to avoid...