Don Q
Puerto Rican character, carried by the Q.
Overview
A redesign for Don Q, the rum named for Don Quixote and a family's quest for perfection in rum making. The aim was singular: the bottle should feel like Puerto Rico, a rum named for a dreamer and dressed in its island's streets.
Brief and challenge
The existing identity leaned on heritage cues that could belong to many spirits. We wanted Puerto Rican character to come through on the shelf, while keeping the Don Q wordmark and the large Q that people already recognise.
Role and deliverables
We redesigned the label, extended it into bottle packaging and built the pattern system and print advertising around it.
- Label redesign
- Bottle packaging
- Pattern system
- Print advertising
Process
The label takes the colours of Puerto Rican street art and the patterns of its culture. We set a fine line grid of small cultural motifs on white, broke it with blocks of red, yellow, blue and green, and closed the base with a red zigzag band. At the centre, the serif DON and a large, confident Q sit in cobalt with a thin gold keyline, shown here on a blue glass bottle of the Coco variant.
Outcome
Street-art colour and cultural patterns surround the Q on every piece. The same visual language runs from the bottle to the packaging and into print compositions that place the new bottle within historical advertising imagery, so the redesign reads as one continuous system.
