Our new bottles are hitting the shelves at last.
And we're waiting nervously to hear what people think of what we've done to the back. or rather what we've left out... the nice little scrawls, circles and comments we used to scribble on them.
(Here's the back of a 2003 bottle, in case you missed it.)

We added the handwriting because we hoped it would make the drinks feel a bit more "friendly" and "personal" - we even signed "Harry & Marcus" on the bottles.

So what's not to like?

Firstly, handwriting has become a bit of a cliché - the moment the supermarkets start wading in with own-label drinks covered in handwriting, you begin to think it's time to move on.
Secondly, it feels a bit "false" - clearly, we don't walk round the bottling plant, scribbling on every bottle. So there's something vaguely disingenuous about it - like people who use a GIF signature on their letters. And several people we asked assumed that Harry & Marcus were probably characters invented by a big corporation. (We exist! We breathe, we eat, please believe us!)
And thirdly, whilst the scribbles really stand out and attract attention, we suspect they make the rest of the text harder to read. So is it better for everyone to just read a few scribbles, or hope that a few more people will read a bit more (even if a few then read nothing at all)?
Hmmm.

What do you think?

If there's one thing we've learned over the last year, it's that when you think "perhaps we could just tweak our logo", it's probably time to sit down and have a cup of tea...

Our "old" logo was classic and understated and "cool", in a fashion-label sort of way.
The trouble is, nobody noticed it. Most of the people who knew our drinks used to say "oh yes, the ones in the colourful bottles - what are they called again?" In fact, from my desk I can't even read the logo on the shelf 10 feet away.

So we thought, let's try and make a more distinctive logo that stands out more on the bottle.

Simple.

Except that these things aren't necessarily compatible. You can have standy-outy. Or you can have simple and classy. But you can't really do both. The more that it looks like a "logo", the less it looks classy and cool. The Chanels, Hugo Boss and Space NKs of this world don't really have "logos" - they just use simple text. Because logos, ultimately, aren't cool. Coca-cola, Reebok or Kodak - the logos that if you saw just a corner of them you'd know what they were - they'll never be "cool". Unless they're apple maybe (drat, there goes our theory).

Anyway, we had to do a lot of soul-searching. Ooh, what are we really like? What are our values? What do people think about us? What would we like them to think?

It was exhausting.

But here are a few of the steps along the way.

Hope you like where we ended up.