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. “Launching REVIVR from Switzerland wasn’t just about geography; it was about aligning the product with the precision, quality and trust that Switzerland represents,” Cattaneo tells us.
Texture runs through the brand as a recurring vocabulary. The matte finish on the can, the grain in the photography and the sculptural forms used in the visuals. Nowhere is it more deliberate than in the PR box, designed by ADDRESS ARTS to shape REVIVR’s first impression in the hands of partners and press, and produced by REVIVR in moulded recycled paper, wrapped with a yellow label carrying the brand’s tagline. “It mimics the raw mineral forms that inspire the brand, creating a direct tactile connection to what electrolytes are: essential minerals,” Cattaneo explains. The pulp reads as raw stone from a distance and as something hand-held and deliberate up close, and its sustainability sits naturally inside a brand built on restraint. “We wanted to create a collectable piece, something people would display rather than discard.”
The system extends through a 12-can carton that holds the same minimal typography and strict spatial hierarchy, and a black performance bottle that completes the ecosystem. CGI was introduced into the workflow early, allowing ADDRESS ARTS to test design directions and refine visual decisions before sampling or production began, and to keep the brand’s art direction inside a controlled experimental space. The reference points ADDRESS ARTS drew on were the rocks, snow and calm lakes of the Swiss landscape, alongside legacy watchmaking and contemporary Swiss exports such as On – a vocabulary of raw, textured, precise and restrained marks that the team translated into something built to scale beyond its home market. “We believe that staying close to our Swiss core and reason for being is what will give us a deep advantage in the industry,” Cattaneo reflects. “The brand speaks a universal language of modern wellness, but it’s rooted in something specific.”
All images © of their respective owners.
Content taken from REVIVR
