ABOUT

Having to address so many global market needs, the Sprite brand was inconsistent, buried under several visual equities, and often playing into category norms for refreshment/flavor cues. With the new positioning of “clarity”, we edited and elevated the brand to re-establish its status as global icon.

Uncoupling the wordmark from the Spark, aligning it on a horizontal baseline, and recrafting the unique letterforms revealed how powerfully recognizable the brand is with just a few elements. The white wordmark on the green background lent itself to a simple packaging versioning system: background = flavor, and the wordmark switches to black for zero sugar.

The recrafted Spark was now a standalone symbol, working as a secondary signoff in layouts, or as a bold shorthand for Sprite in contexts where the brand is already understood.

The secondary system mimicked the packaging through simplicity and craft. We dialed up the product’s physical clarity with high contrast lighting, and an emphasis on refraction and distortion. A custom display weight of Aktiv Grotesk brought the expressive details of the wordmark and spark into headlines. The final touch was an emphasis on graphic animations playing with transparency as a more attitudinal approach to refreshment cues.

Results: Sprite Trademark globally showing strong growth on revenue and profit.
Sprite Zero Sugar demonstrating accelerated growth (esp. in key markets USA and China) and contributing significantly to global market share change for Sprite.
Sprite rose to 15th place in the rankings of Gen Z's favorite brands.

With a global business this size, it is important to note that the design work sparked a renewed commitment and belief in the brand with bottlers and customer teams. This helped them focus and ramp up execution, gaining valuable display space that contributed to these great results.
Rapha Abreu, Global Vice President of Design at the Coca-Cola Company