An Austin icon with a legacy dating to 1895 needed a visual identity that could carry the weight of that history without getting crushed by it.
Topo Chico
Brand Identity, Packaging, Campaign
Pixel Forge Creative
Austin, TX
Topo Chico had cultural cachet that most brands spend decades trying to manufacture. Austin locals, bartenders, and the cult of sparkling water devotees knew the brand. The problem was the visual identity hadn't kept pace — it looked like it was printed in the 1970s and nobody had touched it since.
The brief: preserve the authenticity. Kill everything else that wasn't working. Build a visual system that could live on a shelf in a corner store, in a bar cooler, in a campaign on social, and in an international retail context — all without losing the soul of what made Topo Chico Topo Chico.
We started with the bottle. The form itself is iconic — that amber-green glass, the fluted neck, the generous curve. We treated the label as the brand's loudest voice, not a footnote.
Typography was rebuilt from scratch. Bold condensed letterforms in the wordmark — set in custom tracking — to telegraph confidence without screaming. Color palette: the mineral teal the brand had always owned, now amplified against near-black. The orange accent exists only where we needed a moment of electricity. Not everywhere. Just the right places.
Once the identity was locked, we art-directed the first full brand campaign. The concept: Topo Chico doesn't need to be explained. It needs to be felt. Every shot was framed to make the bottle feel like the hero — and the lifestyle around it feel aspirational without being pretentious.
We kept a tight color world. Dark backgrounds. Real materials. Ice that actually looks cold. The kind of photography that makes you reach for the bottle in your fridge before the page loads.
"The work should be honest to the product. If the design lies, the customer figures it out eventually — usually at the shelf. We built Topo Chico's identity to match what's actually inside the bottle: something genuinely worth choosing."— Marco, Creative Director, Pixel Forge Creative
A visual identity that holds at every scale — from a 12px favicon to a 40-foot retail installation. Packaging that's been called one of the most recognizable in the sparkling water category. A brand that can sit next to international premium brands and not flinch.
The work still runs. The system still holds. That's the point.
