& Walsh’s branding for Bombay Mixers features flourishes in the shape of a single drink droplet

&Walsh has returned to its ongoing collaboration with Parle Agro, the drinks company headquartered in Mumbai, with the release of Bombay Mixers. The agency says it took a decorative and ornamental approach to design on the new product line, aiming to create a visual language that would refer to Parle Agro’s historic headquarter location. It’s landed on packaging filled with “traditional Indian flourishes” – that, if you look closely, resemble little mixer droplets.

“We wanted the flourishes to have some meaning connected to the product, so the ends of each flourish are designed based on the shape of a drink droplet,” agency founder Jessica Walsh tells It’s Nice That. The outcome combines fluid ornamental details with the liquid motif. These flourishes decorate brand illustrations, provided by illustrator Sanchit Sawaria, relating to cocktails or “moments from Mumbai like the classic taxi”, says Jessica.

While you might expect a focus on more decorative work to come with its own challenges for layouts, Jessica asserts it actually made designing all the applications “quite easy to work with” – “as it’s quick to pull from our asset library to make any application look beautiful and connected to the brand”.

Meanwhile, three primary colours – a bold yellow, pink and silver, respectively – unite the work, which Jessica explains resulted from numerous colour iterations, tested on the shelf. &Walsh also looked to Parle’s other product line while establishing references, not for inspiration, but “to create unique distinctions between each brand”, says the agency founder. The result blurs the line between where brand illustrations begin and type flourishes end.