Pack design of the week 🔥

There are some ideas you see and wish you thought of yourself.

Today’s episode is a highlighting epic packaging design for a new vodka brand I spotted when trawling the internet for inspiration.

I’m experimenting with a new format - shorter, punchier and an ongoing series. The long format stuff will stay, but this might be a new rotation. Vote in the poll at the end if you liked it.

This edition of supergoods is proudly brought to you by Appetise for Business

Will AI take over grocery shopping? Find out what shoppers think.

We looked at shopping behaviour across 90K households in Australia and NZ to find out. Turns out there's a very specific line shoppers won't let AI cross yet, and knowing exactly where it sits is about to become a big deal for FMCG brands.

Here's what we found:

✅ AI is welcome right up until the basket. Shoppers are happy to let it plan meals and shortlist options. But at the actual point of purchase? They take back the wheel.

✅ This isn't a tech problem, it's a trust problem. The capability's there. The permission isn't – yet. Brands that understand why that line exists now will have a serious head start when it moves.

Why this matters for you: Packaging, shelf placement, promo, visual identity: these all exist to win a shopper standing in an aisle. But in AI-assisted shopping, that decision might get delegated to an agent instead. And agents don't care about your shelf-facing. They're reading price, nutritional data, ingredient lists, review scores and purchase history.

If you're thinking about what that means for your brand, we break it all down in the Grocery Gap report.

We love to Rallie behind good design.

This new US-based brand Rallie stood out to me because I think it’s both creative and effective - a surprisingly tough balance to strike.

Designed by Odds Studio in Paris, the product is an RTD coconut water and vodka.

Coconut water itself has been on an upward trend in consumption consistently for the past five years, so why not add vodka?

The concept itself is not inherently new, there are loads of coconut water vodkas out there. But what I liked about Rallie was the design approach.

Let me break down why I think this works.

1. Code theft

One of my favourite ideas in design is stealing category codes from spaces far away from your own. I call it “code theft”, and I’ve rewritten about it deeper before here.

Rallie is a killer example of code theft in action.

Fresh produce stickers have been around forever. We are all very accustomed to removing these tiny logos every time we eat an apple.

By nicking the idea of produce stickers and applying them to a can, Rallie immediately cues the attached benefits of “fresh”, “real”, “fruit” in the mind of the consumer.

And it makes a lot of sense given the fruit flavoured liquid. So whether they do or don’t have fruit juice in them, they capture that embedded meaning and associations.

2. Pattern Interrupt

Attention is oxygen for all brands, but particularly new brands.

Standing out on shelf is one of the best ways a new brand can cut through without ongoing investment. I say ongoing, because I truly believe smart packaging strategy and good design requires upfront investment, and those that skip it, wear the cost later.

Rallie’s design is a perfect example of standing out on multiple fronts:
A. The traditional can shape itself is different to most RTD’s in slim or sleek cans
B. The raw aluminium contrasts against fully printed cans
C. The sticker shape of the label design cuts through

The brands that win a few extra seconds of a lingering eye at shelf have a much better chance at being selected than those easily overlooked.

3. It’s a solid system

My last point is really just that this is a sick design. Beautiful typefaces. Super high contrast colours. Fun moments to lock up claims.

It feels nostalgic but still clearly modern. And it gives the brand a platform to build on across other assets down the track.

It feels like the design world is in a head-to-head battle with AI slop, so I can’t help but get excited when I come across genuinely solid thinking from small studios and startup founders.

Epic work.