Responses by Sally Morrow, creative director and designer, Sally Morrow Creative.
Background: Stoic Cider asked us to redesign its identity and packaging as it transitioned its best-selling bottled ciders to 12 oz cans. The cidery has a unique story and innovative fine cider flavors, but it was having a hard time standing out from its competitors. Fine cider is akin to wine—both are made from fruit—and it deserved an elegant and engaging redesign that would help the Stoic brand win over its audience.
Design thinking: Our design objective was to balance the sophistication of the beverage with approachability. Most of the fruit is hand-picked by the Stoic owners or sourced from small farms.
The brand story is incredible: young apple scientists—yep, you read that right—who have a passion for creating artisanal fine cider from apple varietals and other fruit started a family-run cidery on a farm near Prescott, Arizona. They have always loved finding and propagating historic apple species and found the name Stoic fit their intent by equal parts art and science, fully accepting their process’s boundaries and outcomes.
We created a strong articulation of Stoic’s brand with a manifesto. Then, we pulled that voice into the packaging copy. The strategy work we did at the outset created a strong platform for the design.
Our solution challenges the perception that stoicism is staid and dull, and it also shows that fine cider can come from unexpected geographic places like Arizona. We created a brand identity that typographically leans back and forth to create movement. The shapes on the front and back symbolize a vessel as well as the unique dome-shaped doors at the cidery’s entrance. This structure gave the illustration the freedom to float freely around the can. We chose to work with illustrator Bekah Worley specifically for her style and approach to the juxtaposition of the human hand and the fruit—it’s truly an homage to the people who pick and process the apples, prickly pears and peaches every day.
Challenges: Finding the right balance of art and copywriting to come up with a unique solution for a company named Stoic was a challenge. We felt like we were breaking perception barriers about what a fine hard cider might look like. It was important to maintain a level of sophistication to attract wine drinkers while, at the same time, keeping the packaging friendly and evocative of Stoic’s flavor profiles.
Favorite details: It’s tricky to move a solution to an aluminum can from a traditional glass bottle while still bridging the gap between wine and fine cider drinkers. I’m proud that we successfully mixed typographic asymmetry with symmetrical elements to create a visual balance that both supports and breaks the perception of stoicism. Mixing silver, gold and copper metallic colors created a flexible, interesting neutral palette for the cans and the base for the colorful illustration. I’m pleased with the brand’s knowledgable and witty voice, which brings taste descriptions and brand storytelling to life.
New lessons: We learned a lot about apples, the fruit they pair with, and the consumers of dry and semi-sweet fine cider. The learning curve was steep in the beginning as we researched craft cider and apple varieties grown in Arizona and elsewhere. That research was invaluable as we created the brand voice and packaging design.
Visual influences: The target demographics spanned from Gen Z to Boomers—basically, everyone of drinking age. We looked at the wide variety of hard cider competitors locally, nationally and globally to discover what we wanted to diverge from. Ultimately, through a lot of research and design iterations, we found a unique visual sweet spot to fit Stoic. The hand-painted look of the artwork fueled our choice of illustrator, and the final effect contrasts perfectly with the more structured areas of the design. The sophisticated color palette is flexible enough to give us choices as the flavor profiles expand in the future and works beautifully with our matte and gloss finish effects.
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