Four Funky Soda zero sugar cans in Apple Tale, Lazy Peach, Lemon Beat and Pear Up held in both arms

Funky Soda: One Character, Four Personalities, One Shelf System

September 15, 2026

A Soda That Doesn't Shout in Colour

Open any soft drink cooler and the pattern is immediate: full-bleed saturated colour, can to can, edge to edge. Colour is the flavour cue, and every brand competes on the same axis — who can own the loudest red, the most electric blue.

Funky Soda, designed by Anastasia Kornilova for a UAE-based beverage brand entering the U.S. market, opts out of that fight. The base of every can is a warm neutral cream. The only saturated colour on the pack is the fruit itself.

Funky Soda Apple Tale can held against a blue sky showing the illustrated character on an oversized apple — Apple Tale. The cream base means the fruit is the only thing carrying colour. Design by Anastasia Kornilova.

That inversion is the whole strategy. On a shelf of saturated cans, a neutral one reads as a gap — and a gap is what the eye lands on. It's the same mechanic a white page uses to make a photograph look expensive.

One Character, Four Personalities

The range runs four SKUs: Apple Tale, Lazy Peach, Lemon Beat, Pear Up. Every can features the same illustrated girl — black bob, red cheeks, white socks — but doing something different on each fruit.

She reads a book on the apple. She sleeps face-down on the peach. She sits with headphones on the lemon. She climbs a small stool to reach the pear.

Funky Soda Pear Up can raised against a blue sky with a character climbing a stool beside a large pear — Pear Up — the only SKU where the character needs a prop to reach the fruit.

Funky Soda Lemon Beat can held in two hands showing a character in headphones seated on a lemon — Lemon Beat — headphones and a trailing cable, the only SKU with a second object in play.

This is the SKU differentiation mechanism, and it's doing work that colour-blocking usually does. The shopper isn't distinguishing four cans by hue; they're distinguishing four small scenes. That's harder to knock off and considerably more memorable.

The flavour names lock into the same logic. Lazy Peach, Lemon Beat, Apple Tale, Pear Up — each is a compound of fruit plus mood, and each mood is exactly what the character is doing. Naming and illustration were clearly developed in the same conversation rather than handed between departments.

Two Rendering Styles, Deliberately Mismatched

Look closely at how the illustration is built. The fruit is rendered with soft airbrushed gradients — almost photographic, with a highlight and a shadow edge. The character is flat line art with almost no fill: white body, black hairline, two red cheek dots.

Mixing rendering styles usually goes wrong. Here it's the reason the pack works at distance. The gradient fruit reads as a colour mass from three metres away; the line-art character only resolves when you pick the can up. You get shelf impact and a reward for close inspection from the same asset.

Three Funky Soda cans lying in a white wire shopping basket with a lemon — In a basket, the fruit shapes do the identifying — the characters disappear until you look.

That distance test is genuinely hard to judge on screen at 100%. Dropping the artwork onto a real cylinder at realistic scale — a drinks can mockup is the quickest route — tells you within seconds whether your hero element survives being three metres away and half-rotated.

The Red Band: A Claim Turned Into a Pattern

Around the top of every can, just under the rim, the words zero sugar soda repeat in red condensed type. It's the only place red appears at scale, and it's the one element that never changes across the range.

Three things make this smart. It converts a regulatory claim into a brand signature. It gives every can a consistent top edge, so a stacked shelf reads as a single block. And because it wraps the full circumference, the claim is legible from any rotation — which matters more than designers usually admit, since nobody stocks a cooler with the front panel facing out.

Information Design Built for a Real Market Entry

Flat Funky Soda can label artwork for Pear Up and Lazy Peach showing nutrition panel and product copy — The unwrapped label: nutrition panel left, illustration centre, copy and QR right.

This is the most instructive image in the project, and the one most designers skip when presenting work. The wrap is planned as three vertical zones: the U.S. FDA nutrition panel on the left, the hero illustration centred, and product copy plus a QR code on the right.

The structure is deliberate. Because the panel sits a fixed distance from the hero, the same grid holds across all four SKUs — only the illustration, the flavour name and the accent colour swap out. That's what makes a four-SKU launch producible without four separate layout decisions.

One detail worth stealing: the calorie count is set as 02 rather than 2. A leading zero turns a regulatory number into a designed element, and it makes the claim feel intentional rather than incidental.

Funky Soda Apple Tale can turned to show the nutrition facts panel and supporting product copy — Rotated to the panel side — the layout still reads as designed rather than as compliance.

The supporting copy carries a light voice without straining for it. Short lines, a dry aside or two, nothing that would need re-approving in a second market. For a brand crossing from the UAE into the U.S., that restraint is a practical decision as much as a tonal one.

Typography: One Constant, One Variable

The system is simpler than it first looks. FUNKY SODA is set in a bold condensed sans, in navy, in the same position on every can. The flavour name sits at the base in the fruit's own accent colour — olive for pear, orange for peach, yellow for lemon, red for apple.

Navy is the constant; the accent is the variable. Two type sizes, two positions, one colour rule. Everything else in the hierarchy is handled by the illustration, which is why the packaging never feels crowded despite carrying a full nutrition panel, a QR code and a paragraph of copy.

Where the System Goes Next

Funky Soda Lazy Peach can held above a white branded cap against a clear blue sky — The cap takes the wordmark only — no character, no fruit.

The merch decision is worth noting. The cap carries the navy wordmark and nothing else. No illustration, no fruit, no colour. A character-led brand has an obvious temptation to put the character on everything, and resisting it keeps the illustration valuable — it stays something you only get on the product. Whether a small navy-on-white wordmark holds at that scale on fabric is best checked on an apparel mockup before committing to embroidery.

Two Funky Soda cans being lifted from a beige backpack in afternoon sunlight — The 350ml format positioned as something you carry rather than something you stock.

Funky Soda Lazy Peach can balanced on the toe of a white canvas sneaker against blue sky — Hard midday sun, plain blue sky — art direction that costs nothing and scales to any shoot.

The photography is doing quiet strategic work too. Every scene is hard sunlight against plain sky or plain fabric, in a cream-and-white wardrobe. It costs almost nothing to reproduce, which means the brand can shoot new content forever without drifting — a genuine consideration for a company launching in a new market on a startup budget.

Four Takeaways for Designers

1. In a saturated category, neutral is the loud choice. Colour differentiation only works while everyone else is using colour differently. Funky Soda changes the axis instead of competing on it.

2. Differentiate SKUs by narrative, not hue. Four scenes are more memorable and harder to copy than four colourways.

3. Design the compliance panel. The nutrition block is part of the composition, not a box dropped in at the end. A leading zero on the calorie count costs nothing and signals care.

4. Give the pack something the merch doesn't have. Withholding the character from apparel keeps the product the only place the full brand exists.

Two useful comparisons from our archive: Banda Brew builds a café identity on a whole cast of characters rather than one, and NEXO tackles the same drinks-can format from the opposite end, using deliberately clashing colour instead of a neutral base.

Presenting a Multi-SKU Can Range

A four-SKU launch lives or dies on whether the range reads as a family before a single unit is printed. The drinks can mockups range is built for exactly this — multiple cans in one scene, so you can judge colourway relationships and shelf rhythm rather than one can at a time. For the wider set of formats a beverage brand eventually needs, the packaging mockups library covers boxes, bottles, labels and secondary packaging in consistent lighting.