Kalson Kalu Kalson Kalu
CANA.
Cana One brings the beverage aisle to your countertop.
overview.
Services.
Maximum taste. Minimum waste.
TECHNOLOGY + Hardware
The way we produce, package, and distribute goods is destroying our planet. Task with the mission to eliminate plastic pollution before it starts.
We aimed to that by shaking up an industry, starting with beverages. For the launch, we knew we had to play up a new way of doing things for a new brand.
Brand
Strategy.
Through vibrant visuals, engaging language, and intuitive navigation, we transformed Cana's digital brand to mirror the lively offline presence as well its physical appearance. Our approach balanced playfulness with gravitas, underscoring the significant impact while maintaining an authentic human touch.
Through vibrant visuals, engaging language, and intuitive navigation, we transformed Cana's digital brand to mirror the lively offline presence as well its physical appearance. Our approach balanced playfulness with gravitas, underscoring the significant impact while maintaining an authentic human touch. With a vision of revolutionizing the beverage industry's environmental footprint, we aimed to disrupt norms and inspire change. By identifying key differentiators—variety, personalization, and sustainability—we crafted a strategy that showcased the abundance of options while emphasizing our commitment to reducing waste. Leveraging partnerships with renowned brands and influencers, we expanded our offerings and amplified our reach. To transcend the limitations of traditional branding, we infused our designs with dynamic motion, breathing life into every interaction
We defined problems, constraints, target users, and brainstormed feature ideas. We worked through branding and identity. We launched a website and produced videos. We taste tested a lot of beverages from the lab. It was fun.
Early on, we determined our key differentiators. We believed them to be variety, personalization, and sustainability. All together, they contribute to a feeling of amazement. To impress massive variety on our customer, we leaned hard into a strategy that grouped our many recipe variants into brands.
We crafted a familiar interface on the device, prioritizing comprehension over novelty. We built for families, thinking through profiles and parental controls. We developed consistent cross-category flows for beverage customization. We considered gamified systems to encourage discovery and celebrate sustainability.
Over $30M later and a heroic effort across the team, Cana shut down. Nothing mattered if the drinks didn't taste great, and in all honesty I can say they were incredible. Still, some big risks remained, making us a hard bet in 2023's challenging funding environment.
Beverage "printing" startup lands Patrick Stewart as ambassador on Axios
The World's First 'Molecular Beverage Printer' Claims to Make Thousands of Drinks on Food & Wine
Could ‘Printing’ Beverages At Home Reduce Environmental Waste? These Two Companies Think So on Forbes
During the early exploration stage, my goal was to find a identity that feels dynamic, moving and adapting to create something new from common shapes. Based on the strategy direction and my brand values - UNIQUE, MODERN, AND REFLECTION. I was able to come up with some principles:
Communicate a story that evolves and grows in every direction.
Be unusual for eyes, modern and progressive in an attractive way.
Be innovative to break boundaries and think outside of the box.
During the early exploration stage, my goal was to find a identity that feels dynamic, moving and adapting to create something new from common shapes. Based on the strategy direction and my brand values - UNIQUE, MODERN, AND REFLECTION. I was able to come up with some principles:
The symbol consists of two K's that were formed after the shape is cracked and broken into two. The first K is a solid block, while the other K is an outline block that coincides with my brand’s principles of making a perfectly structured design.
I used Poppins Medium typography to create the logotype because it conveys a modern clean image for optical precision that is built to last. The graphic detail over the “K” works as a reflection of the brand essence to show structure and quality.
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Outlines
Solids
Outlines
with
black
white
with
Color
Every element of the brand experience was designed to activate the brand's strategy. To bring the brand to life on web and social media. Through these touchpoints helped create a direction of story telling matched versatile forms that thinks disruptively for the future.
The brand is characterized by a minimal, clean, modern font that suggests both modernity and hospitality and by a greyscale to reinforce the idea of elegance. This comes with the ideation that fuels my drive to create and tell stories through design. I have designed numerous sites and applications for many brands and companies. Visual aspects created with spaces inside all the materials associated with the business.
Elevate your ideas with action.
I understand that feeling problems from the inside will lead to great solutions on the outside. Whether you’re looking to build a website or a brand, there’s a proper direction I can create for you.
This insight was put together with my process help me come up with the key sentence: "breaking the mold". Using this idea, resulted in a visual identity compose of versatile forms that thinks disruptively for the future.
