Holler

A canned soft drink in four flavours. There is one piece of artwork and it is printed four times in four colourways, which is the whole identity. Warhol's argument was that repetition empties an image of meaning. On a supermarket shelf that is not a criticism, it is the brief.

Client
Fictional, self-initiated
Sector
Soft drinks, retail
Scope
Mark, can, pack, retail, vehicle, screen
Method
After Warhol and Lichtenstein
Built
CSS only, no images
01

The mark

A fat slab in the flavour's first ink, keylined and offset in black. The offset is a printing fault from cheap four colour work, kept on purpose and specified to the millimetre.

Primary lockup with a dot field

Offset
Seven hundredths of the cap height, down and right. Never a blur, never a glow, and never in a third colour.
Keyline
Six hundredths of the cap height in black. It is what holds the mark together on a dot field.
Colour
The mark takes the flavour's first ink. It has no fixed colour of its own, which is the point of the system.
Never
Never set the mark in black. Black is structure here, not a brand colour.
02

The repeat

One can, four colourways. Change the flavour and nothing moves, nothing resizes and nothing is redrawn. Only the two inks swap, which is what makes four products look like one thing.

Holler
Cola
330 ml
Flavour

Fixed
The can artwork. Band position, type size, dot screen and the 330 ml line are identical on all four.
Variable
Two inks. Nothing else. A flavour is a colourway, not a design.
Dots
Always the first ink at fifty per cent, on a fixed screen that never scales with the pack.
Why
Four facings of the same shape read as a block from six metres away. Four different designs read as clutter.
Holler
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The block, as it sits on a shelf

03

Colour

Four pairs, and a pair is indivisible. The first ink carries the mark and the dots, the second is the ground. Neither is ever used without the other.

Cola#ED1C24 · #FFD400The original. Outsells the other three together.
Lime#00A651 · #FF5FA2The pair nobody signs off first time.
Berry#7B2CBF · #FF7A00Highest contrast of the four. Used for launches.
Ginger#0057B8 · #FFE9A8The quiet one. Its ground is nearly a neutral.
Pairs
Four exist and a fifth flavour needs a fifth pair tested against all four on a shelf, not on a screen.
Order
First ink then ground, always in that order. Reversing a pair makes a flavour look like a diet version.
Black
Keylines, type on grounds, and the price flash. It is never a flavour ink.
04

Typography

A fat slab for anything shouted and a plain grotesque for everything the law requires. The slab never sets a sentence and the grotesque never sets the name.

Name
Alfa Slab OneHoller
Flavour
Alfa Slab One 26Berry
Copy
Figtree 16 / 26Made with real juice and less sugar than the one you were about to pick up instead. Chill it, or do not, we are not going to police that.
Legal
Figtree 800, tracked330 ml · 4.2 g sugar · Best before end
05

Applications

The dot field is the connective tissue. It is on the pack, the shelf strip and the side of the van at exactly the same screen, so the van looks like a can that got bigger.

Four pack
Holler

Four pack sleeve

Two for three All flavours

Shelf strip

Holler

Delivery van

FlavoursStockistsAboutShop

Four flavours,
one can

In corner shops from March and in the big four from May. Cases of twenty four direct, if you would rather not wait.

Find a shop

Website

Holler
Cold330 ml

Six sheet

06

What breaks it

Every one of these has been asked for by a brand manager who wanted their flavour to stand out. Standing out from the other three is the one thing the system will not do.

× Holler
Do not set it in black Black is the keyline and the structure. A black mark reads as the discount range.
× Holler
Do not scale the dots The screen is fixed at every size. Enlarged on a poster it stops reading as print and starts reading as a pattern.
× Holler
Do not reverse a pair Ground and ink are not interchangeable. Swapped, cola reads as a diet variant that does not exist.
× Holler
Do not slant it There is no italic. Skewing a slab thickens one side of every stem and the keyline stops being even.