ADDRESS ARTS treats REVIVR’s hydration can as a piece of Swiss design

The Brand Identity: Sports hydration drinks usually shout from the shelves with saturated colours and italic typography, mimicking energy drinks rather than the calm of the products they claim to be. When ADDRESS ARTS began work on REVIVR with founders Ilan Cattaneo and Clément Tastet, the brief pointed in the opposite direction.

The brand is Swiss, the founders came from a luxury background steeped in watchmaking and precision engineering, and they wanted to create a canned electrolyte drink that felt closer to those reference points than to anything currently on the shelf. “Our decision to stick to our DNA rather than industry standards was intentional from the beginning,” says Cattaneo, REVIVR’s Co-Founder. “We are passionate about the sectors that dominate Switzerland. Our goal wasn’t to add another loud product on the shelf, but to create a brand that goes beyond the can.

A product you want to keep even once you’re done consuming it.” That positioning shaped the design system from front-to-back. ADDRESS ARTS, founded in 2020 by Amr Elwan, partnered with Cattaneo and Tastet to build the brand from the ground up – naming, strategy, identity, packaging, art direction and CGI. The name itself draws on the founders’ mother tongue: ‘revivre’ is French for ‘to live again,’ a phrase that dates back to the moment Cattaneo was sidelined by an injury that kept him away from football for a year.

The dropped final ‘E’ gave the wordmark a streamlined, ownable feel and made trademarking and URL acquisition possible in one motion. For the logotype, ADDRESS ARTS settled on Pangram Pangram’s Räder. The choice was driven by a quiet visual gesture. “The elevation in letters ‘R’ and ‘E’ is a subtle nod to the Swiss landscape without using a direct illustration of a mountain across the brand application or on the can,” explains Elwan. The typeface’s rounded edges set against its block-like construction also carries something of the contrast Switzerland is known for: untouched nature held within engineered precision.

Neue Haas Grotesk handles the brand’s primary typographic voice, while Pangram Pangram’s Air provides a monospace accent that suggests scientific credibility without the visual cliché. On the can, a direct-printed white panel sits on a metallic surface, functioning as a built-in label that holds the essential information while leaving the rest of the can untouched. “The white panel acts as a container or the constraint, with all essential information displayed within it while not compromising the minimalist look of the can,” Elwan notes.

That panel was developed against a strict grid ADDRESS ARTS built across the packaging design process, and its hierarchy was dictated by a single question Cattaneo posed early on: how can someone, in the first few seconds of holding the can, understand what REVIVR is? The science-backed electrolyte ratio – 250mg sodium, 247mg potassium and 60mg magnesium – takes the prominent position, with ‘No Sugar’ and ‘No Calories’ holding their own space. ‘Developed in Switzerland’ closes the panel.

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The article discusses a unique approach to product design and branding in the hydration market, which is significant for brand strategy professionals, especially in the context of sustainability and minimalism.