Work Viva Tequila Seltzer
Viva Tequila Seltzer
A tequila seltzer built from zero into a third space between vodka-seltzer ubiquity and kitsch-tequila pastiche. Top-to-bottom brand work, absorbed into the client's own standards.
- Client
- Viva Tequila Seltzer
- Role
- Executive consulting·Creative direction
- Sector
- Beverage / RTD
The brief
A tequila seltzer with a name and nothing else. Build the brand from zero, and find a third position the category didn’t have yet: tequila-credible without being kitsch, mainstream-friendly without being a White Claw clone.
The audience wedge was specific. The brand wasn’t aimed at the Truly, White Claw, or High Noon party-seltzer crowd. It was for the active, athletic drinker who’d otherwise reach for a Topo Chico Ranch Water, or skip seltzer altogether: tasty, low-calorie, and not embarrassed to be in someone’s hand.
This is the kind of project I love most: full brand architecture built from the ground up.
The work
Full brand creation, top to bottom: logo, iconography, typography, brand guide, packaging, advertising, brand swag and collateral. Operating at chief design and creative director level with junior designers underneath.
The mark itself does most of the structural work. A clean, condensed sans wordmark, confident and gender-neutral and legible at six feet, paired with a small agave-burst icon that gives the brand its tequila credibility without dressing the can up in cactuses or skulls. Each flavor takes a distinct, fully saturated color from a tightly bounded palette so a four-pack reads as a family before it reads as four flavors.
What I’m proudest of
Two things worth pulling apart.
The packaging landed exactly where it needed to: in the third space, readable as tequila-credible without leaning on cliché. And the client absorbed the design into their broader standards. They pulled elements from the favorite direction and rolled them into communications and advertising across the rest of the brand. That’s the part that matters: a client trusting a piece of work enough to extend it into everything else they do.