Pepsi’s new bottle, bent

We have bought a lot of two-liter cola, but its plastic bottle is not a good design.

This is especially obvious when pouring drinks. In order to prevent the "tons and tons" of water from gushing out, we all have to hold the bottle firmly with one hand and hold the bottom carefully with the other hand, slowly Control the downward angle of the bottle mouth.

However, if the bottle body is too smooth and there is no stress point, it will easily turn over when pouring the drink. If you apply force, the plastic bottle will be pinched and deformed.

Originally, in the design of two-liter plastic bottles, Coca-Cola and Pepsi were basically the same, both of which were the standard large cylinder style. But in 2008, Coke and Coke took the lead in adjusting the design, adding a curved element to make the bottle easier to hold, which also had a significant boost to sales at that time.

It was only in 2018 that PepsiCo decided to "renovate" its two-liter plastic bottles. After three years of research and investigation, recently, this new design has been officially released.

The new bottle is bent and thin

Compared with the original slightly chunky old bottle, Pepsi's new two-liter plastic bottle obviously tightens the "waist circumference" a lot.

According to the official statement, the circumference of the previous two-liter bottle was about 13.4 inches (approximately 34 cm), but according to PepsiCo research, the average circumference of an object grasped by a human hand should be between 7-8.6 inches, about It’s about 20 centimeters, which explains why the two-liter bottle of Pepsi used to be uncomfortable to hold.

FastCompany reported that in order to make the design of the new bottle more ergonomic, PepsiCo narrowed the circumference of the entire bottle to 10.4 inches (approximately 26 cm), and also added a circle of concave inward to the bottom half of the bottle. The rotating texture makes it easier to hold.

On the whole, Pepsi’s new two-liter bottle has become thinner due to the shortened circumference, but because the total volume is still to be maintained, the height has also been slightly increased, and it seems to have a top-heavy feeling.

But the new design still won the recognition of consumers. In the previous research, about 90% of users think that the new two-liter bottle is better to hold than the old one, and it is easier to find the stress point when pouring a drink into the cup, and many people can only rely on one hand. carry out.

These threads will have different styles on different brands of soda bottles. For example, Pepsi’s thread is streamlined, which corresponds to the wavy line elements of its logo; as for Mountain Dew Soda, it uses triangular threads to cater to its lightning-like logo, and the visual effect will be more rigid.

Another design adjustment is the label sticker on the bottle. The new design has moved its position a bit upward to avoid the shelf rails in some supermarkets.

In addition, the area of ​​the new label is about 24% smaller than that of the old label, which means that the entire bottle uses less plastic, which is more in line with current environmental protection requirements.

According to Pepsi, the new two-liter bottle will not only be applied to Pepsi, but also to the company's more than 20 other beverages. It will be first promoted in the United States and will be extended to other regions later.

Home office, how to design

PepsiCo launched the two-liter plastic bottle style for the first time in 1970. It was updated in the 1990s, and this design adjustment is the second time for the style, nearly 30 years apart. .

"In fact, what we are modifying is a product with an annual sales volume of 500 million. When you need to be responsible for redesigning a bottle of this market size, and then think about the impact it will bring, this thing becomes irrelevant. That's easy." said Mauro Porcini, chief design officer of PepsiCo.

Due to the epidemic, home office has become the new normal for large foreign companies, and the process of prototyping new bottles cannot be carried out inside the company.

Businessinsider said that in the past, PepsiCo started similar design projects, all required the use of specialized laboratories and workshops, and the cost and expenditure were not small.

In such a special situation this year, PepsiCo had to distribute special Oculus VR glasses to designers, so that they could discuss solutions in a virtual space, and then use a 3D printer to verify product prototype design.

When designing a new plastic soda bottle, designers will mainly consider two points. One is the pattern of the bottle body. As we mentioned earlier, PepsiCo uses specific thread patterns on bottles of different brands, but different patterns also correspond to different hand feelings and grips.

On the other hand, it depends on whether the assumption of the conceptual model is reasonable. Common soda drinks are filled with carbon dioxide gas, and there is already a certain amount of pressure inside. If you want to ensure that it is strong enough before opening and that it will not be severely deformed after opening, you can only use actual models to verify.

Mauro Porcini explained: "We can draw beautiful lines on the sketch, but when you pour in the pressurized liquid, it is likely to be deformed due to pressure."

At this time, it is necessary to redeploy the bottle material ratio from top to bottom. For example, the place near the top of the bottle cap, the threaded area, and the petal structure at the bottom of the bottle, which will serve as the supporting structure and bear the holding pressure, need to thicken the plastic to ensure the strength of the plastic bottle.

As for the label in the middle, it can be made slightly thinner. We can also feel the elasticity when squeezing the bottles and at the same time squeeze them easily.

Soda bottle, straight is better, or bent

Threading plastic soda bottles is nothing new. The most common is the bottle cap. It takes a bit of effort to twist the cap of the soda, and at the same time we hear the sound of "Zizi". This is actually the process of carbon dioxide discharge. If the soda bottle is designed to open instantly, the pressure changes suddenly. The cap will pop out all at once.

As for the bottle body, the main purpose of adding texture is to improve the grip and facilitate the grasping of human hands. From the perspective of mechanical structure, the arch design can also carry greater external force without significantly increasing the wall thickness.

Therefore, adding various lines with different directions and different uneven surfaces on the surface of the bottle body has become one of the consideration points of plastic soda bottles, and of course it also brings different visual effects.

At present, the two-liter soda sold by PepsiCo in the Chinese market basically has lines on the bottle, but the overall shape is still straight, and the arc is not obvious.

In contrast, a one-liter bottle looks much different. It is actually a new style designed by PepsiCo in 2013, with a spiral pattern in the lower part, which echoes the glass Pepsi in 1958.

Its label area is also very close, which not only exposes more beverage parts, but also does not block the logo when held by human hands.

Today, Pepsi's new glass bottles, as well as the current two-liter large bottles, have more or less referenced these new design elements.

However, in the world of soda bottles, the most classic and most popular design is the curved glass bottle of Coca-Cola.

This is a brand new design introduced by Coca-Cola in 1915 in order to avoid being copied by others. It is also one of the earliest curved bottles in the carbonated beverage industry. Its design is inspired by cocoa pods in nature. The bottle body is curved and embossed vertically. Of course, many people associate it with beautiful girls.

From the structure itself, this design also has many advantages. Firstly, its highly recognizable appearance differentiated Coca-Cola from other beverages at the time; secondly, its curved bottle body makes it difficult for people to slip off when holding it and finds the force by embossing point.

Relying on this design, Coca-Cola became more popular, and the most famous bottle in the soda world came out. Since then, many styles of Coca-Cola have also been modified based on this glass bottle prototype-except for cans.

In short, in the beverage industry, packaging design is still very important. Especially when there are more competitors in this field and the business becomes more and more complex, for the "Happy Water" whose taste has not changed much in the past few decades, replacing it with a more eye-catching and innovative packaging is often a challenge. An effective strategy.

Of course, packaging is not only about things such as colors and patterns on labels, but also involves functionality and ease of use. What it tests is whether the beverage brand can understand the changes in consumer demand and how to define the appropriate form. This is ultimately a question of whether the design itself is good enough.

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Ai Faner | Original link · View comments · Sina Weibo