Hello Comrade’s Night & Day packaging works from bar to gym bag

Functional beverages occupy an awkward position when it comes to design. The category has split into two predictable camps: clinical aesthetics that signal science through sterile grids and pharmaceutical precision, or soft minimalism wrapped in creamy pastels and airy type pairings. Both approaches share an underlying assumption – that wellness requires purity. Night & Day, a functional mixer designed to be poured into spirits, rejects that premise entirely. The product hydrates while you drink, delivering electrolytes, vitamins and detox support through ingredients like glutathione, Korean ginseng and Alpha-GPC. Amsterdam-based studio Hello Comrade developed the identity around a different proposition: you shouldn’t have to choose between the dance floor and the gym session that follows. The project began with a constraint that shaped everything after it. “As a packaging-first brand, we began with the format: a narrow 250ml slim can,” explains Creative Director Spencer Woolcott. “That constraint shaped our approach to typography from the outset.” The team needed letterforms that could compress vertically without losing presence, which led them through several directions before landing on FBS Doms. The typeface offers what Woolcott describes as “a brutalist edge without feeling cold or generic” – bold and architectural, with enough hand-drawn quirk to feel ownable. Early explorations included stylised serifs, but Night & Day’s founder Will Hughes pushed toward something more assertive. Swiss-style grotesques, for example, were dismissed as too forgettable for a brand that needed to claim territory in crowded nightlife and retail environments. The visual system centres on twin overlapping circles, a motif that references the night-and-day concept without depicting it literally. “We built the system around the intersection of night and day, not as opposites, but as overlapping energies,” notes Matthew van Ede van der Pals, design partner on the project. The forms draw loosely from eclipse imagery, moon cycles and the overlapping orbs of colour found in club lighting or early morning sun. Avoiding explicit solar and lunar iconography kept the tone modern and minimal, letting colour, geometry and rhythm carry the symbolic weight.