Great design is a core part of any brand strategy and will enhance the performance of any brand in any marketplace. This is especially true within the competitive world of beer dispense. The ADS2 Group's approach has been developed over the last ten years and allows for any project to be undertaken. We can develop an agency's design concept or create and deliver a bespoke design entirely in-house. However, the key to success is always the same: maintaining a close relationship with the customer's brands team. When we fully engage with them and become an extension of their team, we can deliver insights and the skills they do not possess in-house.
Working as partners truly delivers great results.
When approached by the Cobra brand and the design agency WMH, ADS2 were faced with a bold design statement and a huge challenge.
"We want our new Cobra beer font to look like a twisted piece of metal"
Our response to this very open brief was to ask for a couple of days to think about it.
In that couple of days the design and engineering team worked to find a way of producing the design intent.
In a moment of inspiration the question was asked 'why don't we just bend a piece of aluminium'.
Multiple clamps, a machined billet of aluminium and a 7 foot long piece of stainless steel bar and 6 people – yes you could theoretically bend a 14mm thick aluminium plate – now for the real work.
After working closely with the customer's brands and technical team, we started following the Project Path, which ensures key development milestones are identified and achieved. This begins with Insight and Discovery; probably the most important stage within any project, where we define the creative and technical brief with the customer.
Understanding is essential to every successful project. Every designer should be able to work to a brief, but understanding the business requirements behind it, and being able to make positive suggestions as to how a brief can be improved, is something completely different. This is where our experience as designers and engineers gives us a unique perspective and distinct advantage.
The enamelled front badge had to be reverse engineered from the compound surface create by twisting the plate, this was then die-cast, plated and infilled.
Illumination was delivered through a high powered LED uplighter, but the decoration needed more thought.
Sticking to the principles of delivering what is required ADS2 developed a series of process complete counter intuitive to mainstream manufacturing.
We developed a plating system with our partners that did not crack when the part was twisted, the fixing points were then machined, printing was next with the decoration being applied in multiple layers. All in all 5 added value process were applied to the part before twisting, a controlled process was needed.
Understanding the force required to create the prototypes by hand and the simple fact that the tooling budget had not been consumed on what was a fabricated solution AS2 took some of the tooling budget designing and producing a machine to twist the decorated aluminium bodies consistently, running with a force of 3000nm this final part of the puzzle delivered the Cobra bespoke beer font.
'THINKING TOGETHER IN DIFFERENT WAYS EXCITING INNOVATION'
