After an award-winning rebrand of their signature Sparkling Mead, Hive Mind returned to Kingdom & Sparrow to extend the brand into a new category, with a new range of Honey Spirits, starting with a Spiced Honey Rum. While Hive Mind’s mead range is all about flavour, fun and a casual occasion, the brief here was to create an elevated expression of the core brand, which suited a more grown-up audience, with a more formal drinking occasion. The brand wanted to use this opportunity to reach new consumers, and ‘giftability’ was a key element of the brief – this needed to be a bottle you’d love to unwrap on a special occasion.

Capitalising on a recognisable core brand asset, the packaging design for the new spirits range expands on the lino-cut style from the Sparkling Mead cans. We chose to print direct to the bottle for this range, a choice which reflected the nature of the lino-cutting process and speaks to the hand-made process of the liquid’s production – the brand’s founders are never far away, still working on production and tending the hives themselves. Moving away from Hive Mind’s fruit and typography themed Sparkling Mead illustrations, our in-house team illustrated new hexagons, individually designed to represent the flavour profiles of the rum, featuring vanilla and spices for this particular variant. A mature, fiery and rich tonal palette of reds and oranges speaks to the sweet honey, unique blend of spices and warm rum undertones. Mindful of future ranging and to ensure differentiation, as part of this project, palettes have been expanded to account for a number of new flavours.

Emphasising the premium nature of the liquid and dialling up the warmth even more, we used gold foil to create stand out and give luxury cues to the bee icon and the Hive Mind logo. Contrasting against the black background, the wordmark has strong shelf stand-out. The use of a neck label adds another layer of detail, and allows an opportunity for texture through an emboss, further establishing the premium nature of the product. On the back label, we made a feature of the barcode by introducing a unique beehive shape that reflects the fun, crafted nature of the Hive Mind brand.