Gatorade Gx Collaboration Bottles

It was a superstar roster, including  D.K. Metcalf, J.J. Watt, Christian Pulisic, Lionel Messi, Jayson Tatum, Candace Parker, Bryce Harper, Zion Williamson, Shedeur Sanders, Elena Delle Donne, Mallory Swanson and Caitlin Clark.

The idea — and our mission — was to help build excitement for their customizable Gx systems with powerfully graphic custom bottles and packaging that tell the stories of a roster of global sports stars.

BUILDING THE TEAM

Our partnership with Gatorade has spanned more than a decade, teaming up for wins on everything from branding and identity work to industrial design. Together, we’ve created and reimagined products as wide-ranging as sidelines equipment, personalized gear and bottle forms, including their customizable Gx system, which allows athletes to tailor formulas to meet their personal tastes and hydration needs.

CRAFTING A GAMEPLAN

Our job, in collaboration with the Gatorade Brand Design team, was to tell each athlete’s unique story, capturing how they fuel their community and acting as an inspiring call-to-action for the young athlete audience to embrace their own passion for sport and community. We did this via personalized graphic bottle designs and boxes along with athlete-specific insert cards, each providing additional elements of their story, which was further revealed with deeper digital storytelling accessed via a QR code.

For each athlete, the process began by sending them an in-depth questionnaire, assembled by Tether and the Gatorade team and designed to unearth inspirational nuggets from their story. Their answers then acted as source material for our collaborative design explorations and insert cards. With a first round of designs in hand, we met with each athlete to ensure we were accurately depicting them in our designs and get their feedback.

PUTTING IT ALL IN PLAY

Next, we refined our designs, building on their input to craft uniquely compelling visuals that would excite the athletes as well as their fans, who could buy these LTO Gx systems at Dick’s Sporting Goods and on Gatorade.com. After locking bottle designs, we crafted the insert card copy, then moved on to the boxes each bottle was packaged in. These boxes gave us a considerable canvas to expand on the bottle graphics, furthering the athlete’s visual story and providing an unboxing experience to be remembered by athletes and fans alike.