YEAR:
2023
ROLE:
Lead Brand Designer
DELIVERABLES:
Logo Design
CREDITS:
Photography by Brittany Little
overview.
During my time in-house at Resident Culture Brewing Company, I built the brand identity and designed the label and packaging for Cümulo, their first THC-infused sparkling water and North Carolina's first brewery-crafted version of one.
challenges.
To complete all deliverables for this project, I had four months to create the brand from nothing to print-ready, with a quickly approaching launch event on the calendar and a brew tank waiting to be freed up.
Before sketching anything, I analyzed 20 competitor brands for design tropes and aesthetic trends. Most THC-infused beverage brands that I looked at landed in one of two places design-wise: clinical and minimal, or fully psychedelic. My goal with cümulo was to instill a feeling of light euphoria; like floating amongst the clouds (with your feet still touching the ground).
design choices.
Throughout the design process, I stayed informed on cannabis laws in my state, while making sure that the labels were designed to meet federal compliance requirements under the 2018 Farm Bill, working dosage information, THC content, and required warnings.
To reference the adaptogen-fueled mood lift and natural fruit flavors in each variety, I placed an umlaut over the U to double as a smiley face with teardrop-shaped dots as the eyes, serving as a logomark useful across brand applications like can labels, marketing materials, and social media. The logotype is soft and bubbly, built to stand alone as a mark and to also cut cleanly out of cloud shapes across brand applications.
Each flavor received its own gradient background to differentiate SKUs on the shelf. To keep the entire line cohesive and on-brand, I used a single unified gradient that ran across all marketing materials. For supporting type, I chose a variable-width serif to offset the roundness of the logo and keep the system balanced.
results.
Cümulo launched to a strong initial reception in Charlotte, and even across the national craft beverage community. Later in 2024, at the American Spirit Beverage Awards, the line earned six medals! Tropical Punch took Gold regionally and nationally and Pink Lemonade and Mango Lime each took Bronze at both levels. Makes sense that the flavor is just as enticing as the design!
As the sole designer on the project, I was responsible for all visual and written elements of the brand from concept through production. Seeing it out in the world, on shelves and in people's hands around Charlotte, is one of my favorite things about this work.
