Custom drinks company ELIQS takes “show not tell” branding approach

Its new look is designed to be more legible and coincides with relaunched website, which aims to be more intuitive.

Customisable canned drinks company ELIQS has rebranded with a “lighter, brighter” digital-first identity, which accompanies an overhauled website with improved navigation.

ELIQS is a service for customising a beer, wine or seltzer-filled can with a pattern, image, or text. The rebrand was done in house and led by the company’s creative director Katie Barger.

The “show not tell approach” of the branding lends itself to the nature of the product, Barger says. Part of this was a new, more accessible colour palette and more legible typography.

Though the ELIQS logo stayed the same, Barger says that is has “cleaned up its typefaces”. The new “hero typeface” is Founders Grotesk, with Editorial new being used as the accent typeface, Barger adds. Previously the company used HK Gothic, La Nord, and Editorial New but Barger explains that “a clean-up of the its typographic hierarchy” was needed, as well as legibility optimization.

ELIQS new look takes cues from its old colour palette, according to Barger. This consisted of forest green, ELIQS highlighter yellow, and white, with a secondary palette of ELIQS burnt orange, ELIQS electric blue, and ELIQS lavender.

To improve legibility, ELIQS made its forest green darker which is often used as a background colour on the site. For the same reason, the highlighter yellow is now “brighter and more vibrant”, says Barger.

She adds, “While our original palette was visually appealing, it was muddy and didn’t speak to the vibrance of our cans.” The brighter yellow is meant to make the brand feel “younger and refreshed”, Barger says.

ELIQS “Winky mascot” also got a small update. Barger says, “We got a lot of feedback about Winky’s original eye looking more like a pill than a can tab, so we tweaked it to look more can tab-y.”

After “learning more about its customer base”, ELIQS decided to invest more into the digital experience to simplify the UI, according to Barger. She adds, “I think the single best UX improvement has been our navigation redesign”.

Since the product is not straightforward and requires some work from the customer, the idea behind the website redesign was to make navigation as easy as possible. The main navigation has now been “stripped down” to two options which are templated designs and 100% custom designs, says Barger. The previous navigation consisted of six links.

As well as the website relaunch, the new branding will also roll out across the company’s Instagram, comms and ads and, eventually, TikTok.

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