Mother knows best! Agua de Madre’s friendly, frenetic brand taps into childhood nostalgia

Founded in 2017, the small batch, London-brewed sparkling water kefir brand Agua de Madre has plenty to boast about its offering, being a naturally low sugar, gut-healthy drink packed with billions of live cultures. In 2024, however, it had something else to boast about, a brand-spanking new identity from designer Chris Chapman. Reflecting the mother culture of the drink’s fermentation process, the rebrand embraces both the nurturing side of the beverage as well as its vibrancy, opting for a friendly, frenetic amalgamation of colours, types, stickers and styles. 

“There were two main goals of the design,” Chris tells us, letting us in on the inspiration behind Agua de Madre’s playful aesthetic, “to communicate taste and to honour the spirit of the Madre.” He adds, “by jostling vibrant colours and nostalgic typefaces together we were able to hint at the drinks’ lively taste,” introducing candidly overlapped stickers to reference children’s sticker books (and the joy one had with them).“While water kefir is low in sugar and sophisticated in taste, it is a soda-style drink,” Chris notes, “to reflect this, we used familiar, playful fonts and bright, vibrant colours,” setting the water kefir drink apart from its alcoholic and kombucha-based competition. 

The result is something intentionally joyful, in part due to the creative concoction of typefaces, including Lift Type’s Baste, Buffalo Western by Kustomtype, Letraset’s iconic Frankfurter, Cooper, ITC Bauhaus, Aldo Novarese’s infamous Eurostile, Hobo, designed by Morris Fuller Bento, VAG and Eliott Grunewald’s Moore Henry. “They are quite eclectic as a set but share a nostalgic pop culture feel,” Chris details, “some of them are old and some are new but, at least to me, they all felt like they were from childhood,” subsequently, especially when crammed within each other’s presence, feeling unburdened, jubilant and, ultimately, nostalgic.

Through this tone, Chris is able to confidently balance something referential and familiar whilst feeling proudly contemporary. Importantly, though, it also provided an emotional foundation for the brand’s core mother motif to be embraced. “We chose to reflect the mother through memories of childhood,” he explains, “the fonts and colours this idea unlocked all seemed to suit a soda drink,” Chris concludes. “And, it offset the suspicion that people who haven’t tried water kefir might think that it will taste weird (it doesn’t!)”