MillerCoors recently relaunched Mexican import beer brand Sol, and partnered with brand agency Soulsight (soulsight.com) to redesign a vibrant new look and feel.

Steeped in 119 years of history, Sol is a storied brand that was inspired by a ray of sunlight streaming through a hole in the brewery’s roof. With so much history behind the global brand, Soulsight’s creative team had to master the fine balance of repositioning and modernizing it with fresh energy, while retaining its iconic heritage to ensure the redesign didn’t alienate existing brand loyalists comprised of 21- to 29-year-old consumers. 

“We had a lot of conversations about how to capture the spirit of this brand, and the main touch points we kept coming back to is the old signage around Mexico — the old tin signs and the murals,” said Graham Ebetsch, senior design director at Soulsight. “We wanted to leverage the brand’s heritage in a really meaningful way to create a strong sense of place by drawing out the colors and vibrancy of the heart of Mexico.” 

Soulsight identified two of the most prominent and recognizable design elements conveying the brand’s personality — its bold, red script and sun graphic. The team worked to clean up the on-pack communication then refined the brand mark to be more appealing and approachable. Applying a meaningful treatment of the sun iconography (“Sol”) gives the brand a sense of placement with the sun shifted lower and more vibrant rays radiating across the pack to illuminate the script. A brighter color palette replaces the previous black and white dominated background, lending a fresher, more optimistic feel. 

Medallions placed at the bottom of pack and the top of the cans serve as credibility cues through a stylized interpretation of the gold medals awarded to the beer around the turn of the century. New on-pack messaging adds clarity in communicating that this is an authentic Mexican lager or Cerveza, Original de Mexico. 

The refreshed design was applied to all of Sol’s offerings, including bottles, 12-oz. cans, single serve 24-oz. cans, and six-pack and 12-pack cartons.