There’s a certain irony in water brands touting purity while bottling their products in plastic. While taking great pains to produce clean, crisp water to drink, these same companies contribute to the pollution of waterways, oceans, and the sources of their products.
Loonen is a new bottled brand that eschews plastic for glass. The brand says it chooses glass because it’s chemically inert, infinitely recyclable, and plastic-free; what’s more, it elevates the brand’s presentation and lends a premium quality, as it’s often the material of choice for higher-end brands.
The brand worked with design agency Colony on packaging and branding. The colorful labels use a pleasant color palette of yellow, blue, and green, befitting a spring (and sparkling!) water brand. The bottom third of the oval-shaped label is blue while the top 2/3rd is yellow, evocative of a sunny sky. A waterfowl sits in the middle, facing backward, creating an accent point that reinforces the brand identity’s nature theme.
Typography is exquisite, as evidenced by the wordmark. The letterforms add a graceful elegance to the brand identity, and there’s a water-like flow and movement to much of the copy on the label. The type choice for “Spring Sourced” at the top of the label is more assertive and matter-of-fact, and it strikes a good balance with the fanciful nature of the primary fonts.
Meanwhile, boxes offer a much larger canvas for the logo to shine. Again, we’re treated to an image of a loon placidly floating on the water, but additional copy promises “a sip above.” Green and brown colors are added to the overall mix, a refreshing step away from the blues that continue to dominate the category.
Loonen’s choice of glass has several advantages, chief among them that it’s classier than plastic and infinitely recyclable. While other brands have launched plastic-free water packaging in recent years, they often use aluminum cans, which are arguably better than plastic (and lighter than glass, of course) and also infinitely recyclable. But glass bottles, at least in Loonen’s case, better signal purity, not least because there’s transparency unachievable with aluminum packaging.
