Coca Cola Signature Mixers are a range of 4 premium mixers created by 4 world renowned mixologists for the eponymous Coca Cola brand. This is also the first time ever that Coca Cola has shared its recipe with an external body (just an interesting fact!).
The brief called for a serving unit that would house the 4 different signature mixers (12 bottles in total) and include an knowledge sharing aspect to educate the consumer on the new flavours, tasting notes as well as the mixologist from whom they were created. The unit also needed to be able to serve the drink i.e. include an ice bucket to keep them cool. The design direction for this comes from Coca Cola's "Enter the Dark" campaign for the launch of these.
We created a unique unit that houses 12 of the signature mixer bottles and an acrylic information card for each.
For this unit, we wanted to maintain the natural timber whilst also protecting and sealing it. We decided to use the Japanese method of Shou Sugi Ban which chars the timber thereby preserving and antiquing it.
There was few reasons for using this technique;
* We wanted to create a unique exterior for the unit without contaminating it with paint
* We wanted to create a dark exterior to reflect the "Enter the Dark" theme
* We also needed to preserve the timber making it waterproof
Using this method allowed us to achieve all of these points for the exterior of the unit. We laser etched the Coca Cola logo onto the top of the box so that it's "black on black" further reinforcing the "Enter the Dark" theme.
The unit is opened using a red leather tag which can be customised for individual bars with their logo.
The opening of the unit reveals a more colourful interior. 4 rows of 3 bottles of each of the signature mixer flavours sit in their own colour designated section. The acrylic card that sits behind each row can be pulled out to reveal information about the bottles such as flavour profiles, tasting notes, alcohol pairings and information about the mixologist who created it. These acrylic cards are also colour coded in the same colour as the flavour profile that they correspond with.
The lid of the unit - sealed and lined with black acrylic - doubles as an ice box to keep the bottles cool at the table.
The idea for the boxes is to have them appear mysterious from the outside. The lowkey branding and black exterior achieves this. The colourful interior is then nicely contrasted with the exterior revealing the bottles and their information.
These boxes were debuted in Ohana Tiki Rum Bar with 16 more produced for other locations.