There is a specific problem reserved for manufacturers that grow to be too profitable. Aperol is aware of it effectively. After Forbes topped the Aperol Spritz America’s hottest drink in 2024, the Italian aperitif confronted an ironic disaster: ubiquity had made it invisible.
In different phrases, when your vivid orange bottle seems in every single place from Coachella to nook retailers, how do you cease folks from scrolling previous? Antwerp and London-based studio WeWantMore had a solution, although not the plain one.
Reasonably than screaming louder or plastering logos in every single place, they did one thing extra fascinating: they bottled golden hour.
Design an working system
The problem was deceptively easy. Aperol had simply accomplished a rebrand to revive some premium polish to its picture. The visible identification seemed sharp.
However what occurs when that identification must work in a Milan flagship bar, at a music pageant, in Rome’s Fiumicino airport and on a grocery store shelf? Most manufacturers would create a method information and hope for one of the best. WeWantMore constructed one thing extra like a design working system.
The breakthrough got here from focusing not on the product however on the second round it. Italian aperitivo tradition has a particular high quality: that heat, convivial hour when the solar hangs low and the primary drink alerts the transition from work to pleasure.
WeWantMore realised this sense (not the bottle, not even the drink) was what made Aperol resonate. Their job was to make each encounter with the model really feel like moving into that golden-hour glow. What emerged is a design language that works by means of environment quite than announcement.
Translucent orange wall panels forged sunset-like gentle throughout areas. Concentric arches reference the setting solar with out hitting you over the top with symbolism. Wave patterns recommend Mediterranean coastlines. Cherry wooden bar tops and orange satin steel particulars create heat with out kitsch.
Even the seating was thought-about: cushioned chairs for stress-free, customized tables and counters designed particularly to showcase the drink and encourage the form of leaning-in dialog that defines aperitivo hour.
Admirable restraint
Based in Antwerp in 2006, the studio’s background spans hospitality design, retail and branding; an uncommon mixture that proved important for making a framework versatile sufficient to work in every single place whereas remaining distinctly Aperol.
The genius right here, actually, is within the restraint. These components are signature sufficient to be recognisable however summary sufficient to adapt. Meaning a flagship bar in Milan can deploy the complete arsenal. A pageant activation can simply use a subset. A retail show can merely reference one or two particulars. The system scales up and down with out shedding coherence.
WeWantMore understood that premium is within the particulars. In order that they partnered with Raak Design Studios to create a collection of bespoke product components; the form of customized touches that sign care and craft. These aren’t merely ornamental thrives, however useful items that improve the expertise at each stage, from how the drink is served to how the house feels while you’re in it.
Key takeaways
This framework addresses a problem many world manufacturers face: sustaining consistency throughout wildly completely different contexts with out changing into formulaic. Too inflexible and you find yourself with an identical, soulless areas. Too unfastened and the model fragments into incoherence.
WeWantMore’s resolution works as a result of it is constructed round an expertise quite than a guidelines. Groups implementing the framework worldwide aren’t following guidelines: they’re recreating a sense.
It is also a reminder that environmental design has grow to be as essential as emblem design for model identification. When your product seems in 1000’s of places, the house round it does as a lot communication because the packaging.
Aperol’s problem wasn’t that individuals did not recognise the bottle—it was that they’d stopped noticing it. By controlling the setting, WeWantMore made the model really feel particular once more.
There’s one thing quietly satisfying about watching a design resolution that trusts environment over aggression. In a panorama the place manufacturers more and more compete by means of quantity (extra touchpoints, extra content material, extra aggressive visibility), Aperol has gone in the wrong way. They’ve made their ubiquity really feel intentional quite than unintended; premium quite than pedestrian.
The lesson for different artistic professionals is not to repeat the translucent orange panels or the concentric arches. It is to recognise that typically the reply to a branding problem is not within the product itself, however within the expertise surrounding it.
WeWantMore did not redesign Aperol’s identification: they designed the sensation of encountering it. That is a considerably extra fascinating transient, and on this case, a more practical one.
