MELLO YELLO REBRAND
Mello Yello is a soft drink citrus flavored beverage created by the Coca-Cola company. The history of Mello Yello started with its conception as a way to compete against the Mountain Dew brand. Because of this the most recent redesign of the brand has taken the soda into a new direction, abandoning its previous relaxed and fruity design, with a more aggressive, industrial look, ditching its green and red secondary colors in favor of black and yellow exclusively. This comes as another way to compete with Mountain Dew, which has grown more and more as the soda of choice in America’s Heartland working class. The goal of our new rebrand is to move away from the masculine and industrial look, and while not entirely returning to its older aesthetic, try to find a more fitting visual identity of the soda.
The target audience for this rebrand is the working class American, and anyone else who enjoys citrus soda. Once again utilizing the entire work mark as the logo, returning to a lowercase sans serif, visually in tandem with the laid back nature of name. Red and Green secondary colors return, intersecting with the two lines created from the ‘ls’ of Mello Yello, visually reminiscent of carbonation bubbling to the surface. Not gone is the industrial look of the previous incarnation, keeping with the black type, and uses a worn and rough texture throughout the yellow background to still show that this soda may be worn, but not broken. The challenges faced with this rebrand were in the marrying of the older, more groovy 60’s inspired designs, and the new energy drink aesthetic the brand has tried to pivot to.
For the mediums this design is placed on, the 12 oz can is used, as well as the diet variant of the soda, reversing it’s two primary colors, similar to older designs. Finally there is the plastic bottle, as would be sold individually rather than in larger quantities. Overall this redesign recaptures the spirit of the soda, but still stands out as a soda of the working man.