Holy Sh!t Hot Sauce

Holy Sh!t launches as six sauces, from Original Sin to Last Regret, onto one of the most crowded shelves in the store. Every hot sauce already claims to be the hottest, and most of them look the same saying it.

The job was a brand with enough personality to get picked up on sight, then hold that personality across six bottles, a shop, a social feed and a film.

I took all of it: logo and lettering, the packaging system, guidelines, merchandise, website design, a nine-ad social campaign, and the campaign film, which I wrote, directed and edited.

I started with the name, because it already does half the work. It’s what you say after the first taste. So the line became “It hits different,” and everything had to sound like that moment: loud, a little rude, honest about the regret.

A flaming skull is a hot-sauce cliché, so I gave it a job. Repeated, it becomes the heat scale on every label, and the count climbs with the burn.

That set the rule for the system. The wordmark never changes shape. Only the colour moves, to match the flavour it sits on.

The Holy Sh!t script is artwork, drawn and never typed, sitting over the flaming skull. It travels as cream on red, cream on black and black on kraft.

Holy Red #DD151C and Bone #DCB190 carry the brand. Black #0B0B0B handles labels, caps and night. Jalapeño Lime #88B414 and Peach Panic #E06405 only ever mark their own flavour.

Everything that isn’t the script is Oswald in condensed caps: SemiBold for headlines and the reversed “It hits different.” banner, Medium for flavour names, Light for label copy.

Six flavours, one lockup: Original Sin, Garlic Meltdown, Inferno Fire, Jalapeño Lime, Peach Panic and Last Regret. Label colour, name band and skull count do the explaining.

The lineup. One lockup, six flavours, each label colour-coded to its heat.

A shop that talks like the bottle. The hero says it in three words, the filter sorts six sauces by how much you’ll regret them, and the skull count on every card does the explaining. Add a 3-pack of Last Regret and the site wishes you luck for tomorrow.

Nine ads built on reaction portraits: the face after the first taste, with the line doing the confessing.

One identity holds across six bottles, a shop, a feed and a film. The part I’d keep if everything else went is the skull count: you can read the whole range from across the aisle without reading a word.

Project

Holy Sh!t Hot Sauce

Year

2026

Scope

Brand identity, lettering, packaging, website design, social campaign, campaign film

Industry

Food and beverage