2025
Poplab
The Poplab wordmark is drawn to resemble flowing liquid with rising bubbles, directly referencing the kombucha inside and the pop of carbonation. Rather than a clean geometric logo, the letterforms are deliberately inflated and rounded, giving the brand a tactile, hand-crafted energy that matches the product's artisan nature.
The "Cầu" Collection
Poplab releases flavours in seasonal collections, each one a research-and-experiment cycle. For the Lunar New Year launch, the collection needed to feel like a gift: warm, generous, meaningful.
The concept: Cầu (meaning "wish" or "prayer") — three flavours, each embodying a traditional Tết blessing, each carried by a character drawn from Vietnamese folk iconography.
Why Đông Hồ?
Tranh Đông Hồ woodblock prints are immediately readable as Vietnamese. They carry centuries of cultural weight, and their bold outlines, flat colour fills, and compositions built around symbolic figures translate surprisingly well into contemporary packaging.
The challenge was honouring the source without making it feel like a museum exhibit. The illustration style draws directly from the blessings and wishes tradition within Đông Hồ prints, where auspicious figures are depicted bearing symbols of fortune, health, and abundance. Here, each character holds the actual ingredients of their flavour. The folk-art blessing becomes product storytelling.
Every character was redrawn from scratch rather than traced or digitised from historical sources. Line weight is looser, the palette shifts toward more vibrant hues, and the compositions are cropped tightly to work at bottle-label scale. The result reads as folk art for people who grew up on Instagram.
Because the bottles are clear glass, the liquid's colour is always visible. Label colours were selected to create harmony with each flavour's natural hue rather than compete with it.
*Photography featured in this case study includes both original work and externally sourced imagery used for visual direction demonstration.