Coconutea's designs target the 'affluent, young and health-conscious' with Sri Lankan design cues

The range was created by entrepreneurs Sanjiv Rai and Calvin Lobendhan, and briefed the agency to create a holistic design system that looked to "disrupt the luxury health drink market." Lewis Moberly worked on the naming, brand identity and packaging for the range, which will be sold online through the Coconutea website—also designed by the agency—and on Amazon.

The King Coconut ingredient at the heart of the range is well-known in its native Sri Lanka, and has been used for centuries in Ayurvedic health treatments, but is mostly unfamiliar to those in the West. Coconutea products combine King coconut water with Sri Lankan green tea and natural fruit flavourings to create what the brand terms "a new organic, health-optimising" drink.ee

“Our challenge lay in how to cut through," says Lewis Moberly creative director Emily Fox. "We developed a packaging design, which let the name do the talking, heroing the product and dispensing with outdated juicy coconut graphics”.

Lewis Moberly's designs aimed to target the "over-saturated" market of affluent, young, health-conscious consumers. The name was chosen to sum up "the ingredients and joyfulness of the brand," says the agency.

The packaging designs and visual identity use "pops" of muted colours, and images of palm trees in different tones appear on the bottles' lids and seals to denote the six flavours, which include peach, soursop, passion fruit and strawberry.

The typography style makes a differentiation between the 'Coconu' and 'tea' parts of the word, with rounded shapes echoing the forms of exotic fruits in the former and more experimental lettering in the latter. "The design separates the two main ingredients, engaging the consumer," says Lewis Moberly.

Sinhalese icons meaning 'King' are incorporated in the design of the bottles' lid seals. "Sanjiv and Calvin also wanted to ensure that accents of Sri Lankan culture – the inspiration behind the brand and was communicated in the brand identity," says Lewis Moberly.