Art Direction: Soonduk Krebs
Tequila Colorada is a high-end tequila company from Arandas, Jalisco. We produce versatile tequila flavors with a very smooth finish. A huge part of the company ideology is to stay rooted in family history which is incorporated in as much of our brand as possible. Including my personal family history is a big part of this project along with my craft cocktail lounge "MAS" which can also be found on my website.
OUR STORY
Crafted in Arandas, Jalisco, on a twenty acre plot of land named “El Nacimiento”, the story of Tequila Colorada began. In 1972, founder Luis Lara embarked on a journey to create one of the smoothest tequilas known to mankind. Being born in the “Land of Tequila”, he saw the opportunity to take advantage of the rich, red colored soil that was perfect for growing the blue agave plant. After 7 years of growing his first harvest of blue agave, he created the very first bottle of Tequila Colorada Blanco. The name Colorada comes from the “Tierra Colorada” meaning “Red Land”, which is what Jalisco is known for. Our three mascots for our bottles being the Snake, Lizard and Scorpion were chosen by Luis because those were the three creatures he saw every day out in his harvest fields.
BEHIND THE CREATURES
LA LAGARTIJA
“La Lagartija” means lizard in Spanish and represents one of the creatures that Luis saw out in the harvest fields. Being the fastest of the three creatures, aside from collecting these creatures, kids all over Mexico hunt lizards as an activity. Now as an adult, Luis sees these creatures as a big part of his childhood and watches them run across his harvest fields daily. La lagartija was chosen for Reposado because of it’s quickness. The deep flavor of chocolate is strong but quick on the tongue, along with the aroma of vanilla.
LA CULEBRA
“La Culebra” means snake in Spanish and it was chosen to represent Colorada because ever since Luis was a child, he would hang out with his friends and they would catch creatures and it was always a race to see who could catch the best creature. There were three main creatures to catch with the snake being one of them. The snake was surprisingly not too hard to catch, but it was hard to find! La culebra was chosen for Blanco because of the surprise you get when you find one. Much like the surprise of how easy and smooth our Blanco tequila goes down.
EL ALACRAN
“El Alacran” means scorpion in Spanish and is the last of the three creatures. Luis chose the scorpion as his last creature because of how aware and feisty they can get. Luis couldn’t leave the scorpion out of his brand story because of one specific experience when him and his friends found a whole nest of scorpions and they made the mistake of messing with it. Naturally, with how feisty these creatures can be, they all got stung. El alacran was chosen for Anejo because it is closely tied to the feistiness and spice of our tequila.
BEGINNING JOURNEY
JOURNEY TO TEQUILA
During the brainstorming process for this project, I wanted to do a tequila brand because it relates to my ancestors and my family’s history. My family comes from Jalisco, Mexico which is the land of tequila and my family has a history of owning and working on agave farms. I knew it would be easy to come up with a story and think of tons of creative ideas for this brand since all I had to do was think about my time spent visiting family in Mexico as well as my memories visiting the agave farms. I started with thinking of the aesthetic which I wanted to be sleek and simple with a small burst of energy coming from the torn edge look which can be seen on the label and throughout the whole brand. Along with the torn edge, I added the illustrations later on in the process which made the whole brand come together and feel more special. Finally, I made a website design which ended up being my favorite part to work on and seeing my whole brand work together so well.
BEHIND THE BOX DESIGN
Since our name derives from the red colored land where tequila is made, the box design came from the idea of an aerial view of the blue agave farms and the poetic pattern they create with perfect line placement.
OBSTACLES ON MY JOURNEY
When creating the brand identity for Tequila Colorada, I started with the logo which I wanted to be a very clean design and type based. I ran into some issues when it came to choosing the right font for the brand that matched the aesthetic I was going for. I ended with a serif font and played around with the kerning between letters for a better balance and stretched the first letter of “Colorada” which encased the rest of the word and made the brand come together and feel more expensive. I also ran into my biggest creative block when it came to the bottle label, which ended up taking me the longest time out of all my elements. I solved my problem by stepping out of my box a bit and creating illustrations for each bottle which is where my creatures and their story came about. The creatures came about really easily because the story is based off of my life as a kid when visiting family in Mexico. When I got stuck during this project I always stepped back and thought how I could connect the brand to culture to make it very cohesive and it made everything come together in the end.
ONLY THE BEGINNING
While I am ecstatic with the way this Tequila brand turned out, I would like to expand this brand and create a Tequila seltzer product line to go hand in hand with the brand and market the company to a different audience that likes something a little more bubbly. Seltzers are a popular and growing business in the alcoholic beverage industry and reaching that target audience would only expand the brand and gain more popularity. The idea for the Tequila seltzers would be that they would be called “Spiked Aguas Frescas” and the 4 initial flavor names would be “Lima Limon”, “Pica Pepino”, “Jalisco Jamaica”, and “Mucho Mango”, which all connect back to well known Mexican aguas frescas flavors.