Hydr8
The Hydr8 project was my first real taste of branding. My task was to invent a product and a brand for it. I have always been a fan of products like Gatorade and Body Armor, so I thought I’d try my hand in creating a new sports drink with 0g sugar. I spent the first few days brainstorming names until I came upon “Hydr8”. I wanted to emphasize the hydration aspect of the drink, while also giving myself the ability to do something cool with the combination of letters and numbers. I started manipulating the text and editing certain letters to play with space between certain elements. Once I reached the point where I needed to add the 8, I decided I wanted to mess around with negative space. I wanted to try and keep the same size of font, while just adding an element of depth to it, so I used the shape-builder tool to fill in the curved rectangles in the 8 and what can substitute as a shadow to the right.
Logos
Next I took on creating an alternate logo. I again wanted to continue the theme of “creating by taking away”. I wanted to design something that would be recognizable and would make a consumer think about hydration. I settled on using a water droplet, then used the same font “8” as before as the negative space. I then rounded out the edges to take away some of the rigidity and emulate the more rounded quality of liquids and water.
Standards Guide
After I finished my final logos, I next made created a standards guide to outline the rules and restrictions for the Hydr8 brand. I included “usage don’ts”, as well as the brand’s marquee fonts, colors, and styles, so as to establish a certain baseline of consistency for the (fake) company’s image going forward. This was the first standards guide I ever made, so there are obviously some appearance issues I would change if I did it over again, but it was a great learning experience for me to learn how much goes into creating and maintaining a brand.
Mock Up
For the bottles I wanted each to use exclusively one color, to indicate the flavor. I also wanted to have the bottle wrap to have parts that are transparent. One thing you’ll notice about Gatorade and Powerade is how intense the colors are. It makes the drink look overly sugary and thick. I wanted to maintain that Hydr8 is a thinner, healthier alternative to conventional sports drinks of the past.
