124 | Moonshine MeaderyOnce the design template was created by The Jungle Gym founder Nikhail More, Moonshine Meadery commissioned artists to create designs for the different favors“What we love about the circle is that it is ‘freshly consistent’. The label architecture allows variety and consistency, which is super-exciting for us”hexagons of honeycomb to show what the product is made of. comes to work with us to create their own mead. When one of ‘My personal favorite is what More did,’ says Rehani. ‘He came our employees, Devashish, joined us as an intern, he came up with up with the design for Traditional mead. It is closest to what our Guava Chilli mead which is now one of our best-selling meads. This ancestors drank. Mead is the oldest beverage known to mankind – is why it is exciting. There is a new label on the horizon and that it predates beer and wine by thousands of millennia. It’s also a part freshness is consistent,’ Rehani highlights. of our culture and is mentioned in the Vedas.’ Moonshine has also launched its own brand of the high-quality The Traditional mead label shows India’s frst satellite, Aryabhata varietal honey used in its meads. It claims to be the only alcobev – named after the famous Indian astronomer and mathematician – producer in the world which sells its raw material as well, ‘because in space, partly silhouetting the moon. we are proud of its quality’. The company has launched 12 variants of its meads so far and The brand uses silver PP and a matte lamination layer on its each label is designed by a different designer, depicting the diversity labels. ‘This shift to silver PP and matte lamination happened of the brand. 3-4 months ago. You might still fnd regular PP labels in the market, For Grilled Pineapple mead, the company launched it as a but over time the transition will happen to silver PP.’ competition on social media to crowdsource the design during the Moonshine won the Kyoorius design award for its rebranding frst lockdown in India. strategy. ‘What we love about the circle is that it is “freshly consistent”. ‘I sometimes see the brand out in the wild, which is not really The label architecture allows variety and consistency which is the brand. And a couple of times on Instagram we have had people super-exciting for us. This year, four new meads are coming out taking pictures of white circles and sending it to us and tagging and we are reaching out to artists and fnalizing artwork for them,’ us when it is not even our artwork. The circle for us makes a lot of Rehani says. sense,’ Rehani says. The company outsources printing services and started out Moonshine is making its mark on the Indian alcobev industry applying the labels manually. Now it has an in-house Skanem with a fresh outlook in product and package design. Often product automatic label applicator for front and back labeling and a bottling differentiation is a challenge for new start-ups on the overly machine developed by Rehani and Vishwas. cluttered FMCG shelf. Rehani recommends that start-ups have a The labels also include QR codes with a link to the artist and the clear brief and reference of what they want. inspiration behind the artwork. ‘We see this as an opportunity to He says that working with an agency that guides a brand through shine a light on artists. That’s important for us, which is why we will the complete thought process is ‘invaluable’. always outsource the design.’ ‘We had a one-hour long session with More, who helped us through the process of understanding the exact design that we What you see is what you get would like. By the end of it, we were clear about what direction we Rehani says that all Moonshine labels show what you are going to wanted to go in.’ get inside the bottle. He encourages originality and suggests moving away from ‘If it’s grilled pineapple there will be grilled pineapple in it and conventional thinking. ‘Again, don’t be afraid to zig when everyone if there’s apple there will be apple in it. We are strong believers is zagging. Don’t go with what people believe how things should be in naming our product to depict what you see is what you get,’ done or should be like. You can start afresh and do something really Rehani adds. unique. As clients, More was happy to work with us because we Apart from the three fagship meads, the seasonal variants will be didn’t give him too many constraints about what he cannot do. We produced in limited stocks which may not be available again for a are huge fans of trying something new – our whole business model year or so. The reason is the unavailability of seasonal fruits as the is dependent on trying new things.’ brand insists on using fresh ingredients instead of rehydrated fruits and pulp. ‘We didn’t start Moonshine to start a business. We began as For more information, go to www.moonshinemeadery.comhome brewers and it became a passion. We ask everyone who labelsandlabeling.com