There tends to be a good deal of restraint when it comes to branding for non-alcoholic beverages. Maybe because there’s a lot of explaining to do with words (functional, hemp-infused, “blithe botanicals”), or maybe because doing less seems more serious. Whatever the reason, the defining visual cues of the growing category—carved fonts, a limited palette, and generally calm labels—lean towards sophistication, not fun. Not so with Bonbuz. Slowburn, the latest release from the Los Angeles company may taste good (it’s a blend of jalapeño, blood orange, and grapefruit) but it doesn’t care a whit about “good taste.”
The packaging for slowburn, which was developed by founder Fay Behbehani and lead designer Michael Louis, draws on the “electrifying and reemerging 90’s era.” (Behbehani says that bonbuz’s target demographic is Gen-Z, which explains the bright, wacky choices that characterize most products made for people born around 2000.) “Making alcohol-free sexy, spicy and thirst-quenching was a mission for Slowburn, and we got to say in illustrations what we couldn’t say in words,” says Louis. If alcohol-free beverages (besides, you know, soda) are a niche category, spicy alcohol-free beverages are huddled deep in the lower left corner on the x/y axis of packaged drinks popularity. An objectively unusual product calls for equally unusual branding. And for a spicy drink, I can’t think of anything more evocative than an image of, as Louis put it, “mad juicy lips gripping a jalapeño, and dripping fire.”