Leo Design uses blurred numbers to chart a six-day path to Dry January

The Brand Identity: The hero of every can in the Holiday Detox Pack is a single numeral, and the numeral changes character as the alcohol drops. The ‘5’ on the Strong Stout is sprayed soft and smoky, dissolving at its edges. By the Hazy Pale Ale at 2.0%, the ‘2’ has tightened into a recognisable form with only a faint halo around it. On the final can, the ‘0’ sits razor-sharp on white.

Developed by Leo Design in partnership with Lake of Bays Brewing Co., the pack uses that progression as its core idea: six cans, six days, each numeral acting as a snapshot of how the head feels at a given alcohol percentage. The Toronto-based studio set out to create a holiday gift for its clients and employees, then built the concept around a small behavioural insight about January resolutions.

Going from heavy festive drinking to nothing in a single day rarely sticks, so the pack offers a six-day on-ramp from Christmas to New Year’s Eve, dropping one alcohol point per day: 5.0% Strong Stout, 4.0% Light Lager, 3.0% Juicy IPA, 2.0% Hazy Pale Ale, 1.0% Light IPA and 0.5% Pale Ale Non-Alcoholic. The product name, the Holiday Detox Pack, signals the proposition before any of the cans are opened. “One of the most popular New Year’s resolutions is Dry January, so we wanted to offer something that helped the transition feel gradual, achievable and enjoyable,” explains Marcelo Hong, Senior Design Director at Leo Design.

“That led us to call it The Holiday Detox Pack, nodding to the seasonality and benefit you get from our six-pack.” Making the percentage the hero of each can wasn’t the first idea on the table, but it became the obvious one. Hong describes a phase of exploration that tested colour, scaled numerals, varied type weights and even unique typefaces for each beer. None of those routes carried the proposition as cleanly as the percentage itself. “We liked that metaphor because it visualised the mental clarity that comes with drinking less,” Hong shares.

“Ultimately, we agreed that the best way forward was to emphasise the clarity you get from the regimen and let everything else be a supporting element in the design.” The numerals are set in Leo Repro, a custom cut of Dinamo’s Repro developed exclusively for use across Leo offices worldwide. Hong describes the typeface as one that holds up in both expressive and functional registers, which the project needed in equal measure.

The numbers had to read at the size of a beer can while bearing the weight of a layered photographic effect, and they had to remain legible whether half-dissolved or fully crisp. Each numeral was treated by hand to control intensity, direction and the precise threshold at which the form begins to resolve. “The most challenging part was finding the right balance between the amount and direction of each blur, legibility of the numerals and the overall sharpening effect across all six cans,” Hong notes.

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The article discusses a creative packaging strategy that aligns with consumer trends, making it significant for brand strategy professionals while also introducing a novel visual approach.