Published in · 7 min read · Jan 10, 2023
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Last year was full of big rebrands.
Let’s dive into Sprite’s cleaned-up and refined rebranding!
Intro
The Sprite rebrand was done by Turner Duckworth in collaboration with the Coca-Cola in-house design team. Turner Duckworth was an easy choice for the Coca-Cola company. The agency worked on Sprite before and already had an amazing understanding of the brand.
The Coca-Cola Company & Sprite
The Coca-Cola Company has been around for more than 135+ years and contains about 200 brands worldwide in more than 200+ countries and territories. They have an extensive brand legacy that spans generations. Sprite is their second largest brand which they introduced in 1961 (61 years ago). The beverage comes in multiple flavors, including cranberry, cherry, grape, orange, tropical, ginger, and vanilla. It’s a colorless drink created to compete with Keurig Dr. Pepper’s 7-Up beverage.
Turner Duckworth
Turner Duckworth is an award-winning design agency specializing in visual identities and packaging for big brands. They strive to deliver not only world-class strategic design but also world-class project management. They have studios located in San Fransisco, London, and New York. The agency has won multiple brand identity and packaging awards, including the first-ever Cannes Grand Prix for Design. They work with many leading brands including Amazon, Burger King, and Coca-Cola.
The redesign needed to make things clear
You might be aware of Coca-Cola’s rebranding in 2021. The company collaborated with the UK-based design studio Kenyon Weston. Coca-Cola needed a long-lasting design system that would streamline its global brand and marketing. The design system needed to be more functionally efficient, reduce design waste and have a more eco-friendly approach. I can see that this must have been part of the brief that also went to Tucker Duckworth because you see elements from the Coca-Cola brand back in the Sprite rebrand. It seems to me that the Coca-Cola company wants to align its big brands more by rebranding them. I wouldn’t be surprised if there would be more Coca-Cola Company rebrands to come in 2023–2024.
The Sprite redesign encompasses all touchpoints and centers around ‘clarity’. Their previous visual equities seemed to communicate an unclear brand message which they wanted to simplify. Clarity not only comes forth in their visual identity but also in their strategy and messaging.
Their latest summer promotional campaign, Heat Happens (a nod to sh*t happens) rolled out their new visual identity system. The redesign was already rolled out last year but will continue during early 2023.
The color green has been made more vibrant and the spark element has been moved to the bottle cap instead of the word mark making the brand feel more modern. It feels to me like the team had a lot of playroom to innovate with this well-established brand. They took the legacy brand experience and brought it into the modern era by simplifying it.
The Sprite logo
The logo got simplified and they introduced a new black color to mark the zero-sugar variation of the drink. Visual elements were touched but stayed in line with their legacy. They kept the green color and removed the yellow. They also abandoned the starburst border around the Sprite logo. The logo is now also placed horizontally instead of more slanted like in previous iterations.
I like the new Sprite logo better than the one they previously used. I feel like the logo works better without the starburst border and yellow dot. Using multiple colors in your logo feels a bit dated these days. I also really love the way they designed the dot above the “I”. It’s set closer to the vertical bar, creating a subtle smile that starts from the lowercase “R” and ends at the lowercase “T”. I love when negative space is used in logo design and am a big fan of how they did it here.
The redesign also strives for a more positive sustainable impact
One big change for Sprite is the color of its plastic PET bottles. They changed the plastic bottles from their recognizable green tint to clear plastic. This will help make the packaging easier to clean and recycle according to the Coca-Cola Company.
The Coca-Cola company seems to strive for a better circular economy with its plastics. In 2022 the Coca-Cola company was named the world’s number one plastic polluter by the environmental firm Break Free From Plastic. The company came at the top of the list for the fifth year in a row.
I think the switch from a green-tinted bottle to a clear bottle is a good step in the right direction for the Coca-Cola company. I hope the Coca-Cola Company uses more creative solutions to better its carbon footprint instead of just greenwashing its image. I did like how the green-tinted Sprite bottles looked in stores. They stood out with their green plastic bottles and had a more unique look & feel to them. Using a clear bottle might make them look more like the competitor.
I do however really love that their new clear bottle also resonates with their brand message of clarity. The redesign helped make the product fit the brand: a clear bottle holding a clear liquid communicating a clear message.
Typography
The design team picked a new typeface for the redesign to appeal to Gen Z consumers. It reflects a bold and more youthful version of the Sprite brand. As seen in the examples: the typography can and probably will be used in a very playful way. Subtle alterations in the type give the brand a very playful feeling. The ‘OO’ in Look is used as a set of eyes looking from right to left and back again. The ‘O’ in ‘Zero’ is used to create a bubble effect. The ‘Drip’ example shows a creative way with the letter ‘I’ making it drip downwards.
I do have the feeling that they just scratched the surface with these playful examples. I reckon that they can go a lot further with this in the future. I’m curious to see more and will keep tabs on their advertisem*nts and visual assets.
My final thoughts
I think the updated brand is great. They slightly changed the colors, simplified and scaled up the logo, and created a more clean and minimal version of the brand. This appeals to me because it brings the Sprite legacy brand to the modern era.
I’m curious if Sprite can successfully engage with this newer generation considering that Gen Z is well known for not smoking, not drinking, and being very aware of their health. I do feel like this more playful version of the brand will help them engage with this newer audience.
Turner Duckworth and the Coca-Cola design team did a great job in creating a more bolder and playful version of Sprite. I do feel that they could do more with the typography and playfulness. I’m curious to see more and will definitely keep tabs on the brand and its visuals.
I would rate this rebrand a 4 out of 5 stars.
What are your thoughts on the rebrand?
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(Images courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company)
Interesting links
If you’re keen to know more about Sprite’s rebranding or rebranding projects in general I can highly recommend the podcasts from a Change of Brand. They have a really good interview that goes behind the scenes with Chris Garvey, Executive Creative Director at Turner Duckworth. Here’s the link to their Sprite episode.
