Design Challenge and Design Ideas

Bitters are a mystery to many, but those who use them know they occupy a precious space in any bartender’s armoury. The brainchild of entrepreneur Mary O’Sullivan, Beara Bitters is a new Irish bitters inspired by the Beara Peninsula, a rugged, wild and beautiful peninsula on Ireland’s south-west coast.

As a new bitters jostling for attention on a crowded shelf, Beara Bitters brand needed to strike a balance between heritage, nature and modernity while standing out proudly among other well-established bitters.

How the brief was fulfilled

We took our initial inspiration from the beautiful landscape, flora and fauna of the Beara Peninsula. However, we were confident that we needed to present this landscape in a very modern and relevant manner. The bitters category is dominated by a ‘medicinal/old world’ design approach that tends to be overly ornate and elaborate.

Beara Bitters is a brand new product that will primarily live in cocktail bars and restaurants, and as such, we opted for a more premium, contemporary, and ingredients lead design. The approach used a natural-colour driven illustration style with a modern form and symmetry which, when presented alongside other bitters, achieves greater standout across the competitor set.

The logotype is rooted in local heritage, giving the brand a classic look and feel, with a nod to old-world Ireland.

We chose Irish illustrator, Sally Caulwell to create illustrations for each of the variants – capturing a sense of the bountiful flora associated across the Beara Peninsula. Sally’s modern take on botanical illustrations acts as a direct call out for each of the flavour variants, wrapping the brand identity in a floral wonderland. The overall effect creates a balance between history and heritage reflected in the typography and the contemporary illustrations.

To reflect the rugged landscape that inspired Beara Bitters, we used an eye-catching foil on, textured paper stock and individually die-cut front labels on the bottles.