The
concept
In order to warn against the unbridled speculation and the ecological impact linked to the emergence of alcohol-branded NFTs, communication agency Studio Blackthorns had some fun inventing a brand alcoholic sparkling water called «hardseltzer.eth».
Services provided

The challenge
According to Studio Blackthorns, the NFT market reinforces the idea of the “high-class gallery” that has always been linked to investment, speculation and resale. For them, this is a first ethical brake. On the other hand, we have a digital market intrinsically associated with astronomical energy consumption. This is a second obstacle of an ecological nature.
In an increasingly complex, digitalized and, now, «metaverse» world, Studio Blackthorns wanted to thumb its nose at the cryptofriendly world based on blockchain, the NFT and Web3. Following in the footsteps of Heineken, which is opening its virtual brewery on Decentraland, or Budweiser, which is promoting its beer.eth domain name, we wanted to combine this decentralized trend with a totally conceptual project based around a range of hardseltzer entitled «hardseltzer.eth».
The studio’s idea was to tease “virtual drink tastings” with a slogan “Don’t mint it, drink it IRL!”.


Back to the future
On the graphic design side, Blackthorns played with code art and generative design in order to create random visuals with an ultra-digital trend. For that, the studio used the different algorithms of Kjetil Golid’s website generated.space. We can note that the fractal square effect used reminds us of the (pretty damn) expensive “virtual lands” of Decentraland, The Sandbox and MatrixWorld. Moreover, they chose the name “Freeland Co.” as a company name to highlight the hypocrisy of the prices of a piece of virtual land on the metaverse.
From a typographic point of view, Studio Blackthorns wanted to start with something futuristic and opted for the beautiful Barrett Reid-Maroney font called Wren.
Finally, in order to stay in the neo-future-geek semantics, the agency had fun naming its different flavors like this: Lemon Gas, Alpha Mango, Burned Hibiscus, Non-Minted Berries, Orange PFP.
HARDSELTZER.ETH - Don't mint it, drink it IRL!