Last June, Pond Design was fortunate enough to work with Absolut in creating a special edition rainbow bottle for Pride month. So enamored by the bottle’s hand-painted look celebrating LGBTQ rights, we decided to speak with Pond Design about working with this iconic brand.
Pond Design: We started the project with the awareness that the Pride Rainbow Flag is an iconic symbol. This is both a blessing (immediately recognizable) and a challenge (can easily become a design cliché). For the Absolut Pride, we wanted to find a way to dress the Absolut bottle in the Rainbow colors in a unique and personal way. We initiated an extensive exploration process, investigating colors and pigments, different application and painting techniques, numerous painting tools and types of surfaces. We filled every inch of our workshop with sketches and drafts, until the whole space looked like one big, colorful and exciting rainbow.
Once we settled on a couple of interesting painting techniques, a new round of experimentation was done. Once we reached a substantial quantity of sketches, we started selecting the best bits and pieces. In the next phase designs were scanned and digitally reworked into a number of options that were virtually tested on a 3D bottle, twisting and turning them around to figure out what worked best.
