Branding & Ads for a Candy Company: Dead Sour - Concept Project

The Dead Sour project was done for fun and concept, inspired by a brief from the lovely Abi Connick (@itsabiconnick). The brief created for the company is: "Dead Sour is a mouth-watering sour, sweet business that has been voted the number one extreme sour, sweet brand in the world! They offer a vast range of sweets with extreme sour coatings!!

They have been using an outdated brand identity for three years that feels disconnected from their audience. Dead Sour is looking to launch a new range of sour sweets in the next few months and is in desperate need of a rebrand!"

The first thing that came together in this project was the flavor names. I wanted the names to connotate the assault that the sour candy would have on the senses. After figuring out what vibe the brand would have from the flavor names, I decided to go with branding that can be a mixture of edgy and fun with a bit of in-your-face style. The skull fruit plays its part by reminding you it is going to be intense but also be deceptive with the bright colors.

The edgy, fun, and in-your-face nature of the branding is carried through to the ads, pulling from the graffiti vibrancy and edgy vibe. It's the brand that will challenge you, "Can You Survive the Sour?" and has guerilla marketing by putting these "taunts" with the logo all over the towns on walls, benches, bus and subway stops, etc.

The strong colors are the perfect mix of bright and edgy and have a darker shade that can be used as a partner for the patterns. All color sets were chosen to go well together, so whether the packages are together or on their own, they look like they are from the same candy brand.

The inspiration for the brand styling was pulled from the edgy and colorful vibes from graffiti art and the name Dead Sour itself. The ideation that came from those two alone was something I really enjoyed.