Brand: New Amsterdam
Category: Vodka
Parent brand: E&J Gallo
Agency: forceMAJEURE
Welcome to our Redesign of the Month series—where we spotlight one deserving brand harnessing the power of design to make an impact, tell a story, and outshine its previous packaging. Hundreds of current category consumers evaluate the old and new designs across a wide range of performance areas, including purchase preference, communication, mental availability, and design element resonance. Notably, Designalytics’ testing outcomes align with actual sales performance more than 90% of the time.
Congratulations to this month’s redesign winner: New Amsterdam Vodka.
Founded in 2007 and named for the Dutch precursor to New York City, New Amsterdam’s brand was built to reflect the hustle and drive of modern America—and as a direct answer to the old-world pretense of European liquors.
The brand’s first offering was gin, but it introduced its vodka product in 2011… and it was a juggernaut. Before long, the vodka was overshadowing its older sibling, ranking in the top three of US vodka sales. So New Amsterdam adapted.
They transformed the gin into its own sub-brand, Stratusphere Gin (misspelling intentional for google-ability), with its own look and feel. The vodka now stood on its own, but since its design was created to align with the original gin packaging, it was still living in its shadow.
New Amsterdam realized it was time for a fresh start, but one which didn’t entirely cast aside the brand’s established aesthetic. There was a need to better capture the spirit of its Big-Apple heritage, give it more stand-out power on the shelf, introduce some much-needed modernity—and give the vodka a personality all its own.
The key change was color. The previous version featured white, silver, and a “dusty” blue, which, while it suggested the charm of a bygone era, was relatively muted. The new design is dominated by a rich, saturated blue—bold, distinctive, and attention-grabbing.
The previous packaging also featured a clear label on the front of the bottle (with New Amsterdam branding), and an inward-facing label on the back of the bottle with a sepia-tone image of a cityscape. The transparent label allowed the visuals on the back label to be seen through the liquid in the bottle, which gave the packaging depth but limited its impact.
With the new design, New Amsterdam retained key elements of the prior version—the skyscraper and cityscape—but made them a focal point on the front label. The result is a more direct and easily visible connection between the brand’s name and its distinctive assets.
New Amsterdam also retained the vertical orientation of the brand name, with a slight tweak: a bolder, all-white font in order to stand out better against the dark-blue backdrop. Additionally, the “vodka” text at the bottom of the bottle is a sharper white and has a heavier weight, as does the “5 times distilled” callout (the numeral replaced the word).
This redesign was a clear winner: it outperformed the previous version in consumer purchase preference by an eye-popping margin of 86% to 14%.
Working with its agency, forceMAJEURE, New Amsterdam created a look reminiscent of its predecessor yet demonstrably more exciting and effective. It moves the brand forward, giving the design a modern, almost electric feel without abandoning its roots.
The original design used subtle tones and imagery to suggest New York’s storied past and remind consumers of its connection to the United States’ most dynamic city. The nostalgic visuals undercut some of that dynamism, though, and the updated design remedies that.
While retaining its blue-and-white aesthetic (continuing to align with category codes), the brand now incorporates a deep, saturated blue as its primary color. The look is more visually striking, improves legibility, and creates a greater contrast against competitors on the shelf. In Designalytics’ testing, consumers regularly remarked on how much easier it was to read the new label, and overwhelmingly felt it would stand out more than its predecessor.
The new look emphatically delivered on communication, as it outperformed the old design on every one of the 12 most important product attributes. “Full-flavored” (+62 points), “premium” (+59 points), and “tastes great” (+56 points) stood out as the strongest of the bunch, but the margin was never closer than +31 points.
Keeping the cityscape not only allowed for brand continuity but offered a visual anchor point around which to build the re-energized look. Complementing the midnight-blue of the backdrop with a lighter, almost spectral blue gives the feel of the city at night, which connects with New York’s “city that never sleeps” ethos.
The name on the bottle didn’t need to be changed, really—only highlighted. The brand retained the verticality, as it was one of the most unique elements of the design and helped cement it as different from its competitors. It also aligned well with the main visual element: a typographic tower alongside the skyscraper image.
Consumers overwhelmingly preferred the new version, but they expressed some minor misgivings. For example, the new cap, with its simple “Vodka” messaging, looked plain and cheap to some. Though there was likely a reason for this choice—ease of recognition in a bar’s “well,” perhaps—it may slightly undercut the message sent by the rest of the bottle. It’s worth keeping an eye on this signal from consumers moving forward.
Wins
Opportunities
“This bottle looks more modern yet still keeps some of the feel from the older bottle.”
“I wear trifocals. With the darker background, the words are clearer to me.”
“Feels a bit more premium. It also would look cool under a light on the shelf.”
“The blue is more eye-catching.”
Our goal behind highlighting impactful redesigns is to help brands understand market reactions to design changes and make intentional design decisions. We create a full report of these insightful case studies for every brand redesign in our cross-category database. These value-add tools are created automatically for our clients who subscribe to syndicated category data. For more information on this redesign report or others, contact us.