Skiclub Kampen North Sea Pure: A Design Epitome of Purity and Simplicity

Ulrich Graf's Award-Winning Design Reflects the Pureness of Sylt's North Sea

Skiclub Kampen North Sea Pure, a design project by Ulrich Graf, is an embodiment of the pureness, freshness, and smoothness of the sea. The design draws inspiration from Kampen, the best-known place of Sylt, located at the narrowest part of the island, surrounded by the rough North Sea and the smooth Wadden Sea, a UNESCO world heritage site. The design aims to create a visual and sensory experience that reflects the extraordinary purity, clarity, and beauty of Sylt.

The design's uniqueness lies in its simplicity and clarity. Skiclub Kampen is the only supplier offering premium spirits and soft drinks of the same brand, with bottles and cans sharing the same design language. Each of the four flavours is defined by a specific colour, with the content of the soft drinks matching the colour of the cans. This consistency in design language enhances brand recognition and creates a sense of unity across the product range.

The cans are produced through a mechanical cold-forming process using very stiff cold-rolled aluminium sheets for strength and formability. The printing process involves transferring the ink onto a rubber blanket and then from the rubber blanket onto the can. This method ensures the durability and quality of the print, further enhancing the design's aesthetic appeal.

After extensive market observation, the design team realized the need to distinguish their product from others by applying a unique, pure, and impactful visual appearance. The design was developed without external market research, aiming for a stand-alone design that can be recognized across a distance in a restaurant, bar, club, or even on the shelves of supermarkets.

Overcoming creative and technical challenges, the design team successfully created a design that reflects the brand's heritage of the pure, soft, and perfect nature of Sylt. The design got its perfect shape by turning the logo by 13 degrees to the left, allowing the logo to be perceived in total and not by its individual components. The right shade of colour for each specific flavour was created to reflect the colour of the content, further enhancing the design's uniqueness.

In conclusion, Ulrich Graf's Skiclub Kampen North Sea Pure design is a perfect example of how simplicity and purity can be effectively translated into product design. The design's success, as evidenced by its Silver A' Packaging Design Award in 2018, is a testament to the power of minimalism and the importance of a strong, consistent design language in product branding.