Heineken chooses its 140th birthday suit

Heineken has announced the winners of its Limited Edition Design Challenge, a competition to find the front and back label designs for a million of its bottles.

Industrial design student Rodolfo Kusulas of Monterrey, Mexico and British designer Lee Dunford, a resident of Sydney, Australia, entered the winning designs in a Facebook-hosted competition that attracted in excess of 30,000 entries from more than 100 countries.

The bottles, which will display the winners’ designs and names, will be launched as part of limited edition gift packs in December to mark Heineken’s 140th birthday.

The competition brief was to create a design that “symbolises how people will connect [with each other] in the next 140 years”.

Designers were asked to partner with each other and enter the completion as a pair.

Six finalists were then given the chance to perfect their design and present to a judging panel made up of Evan Orensten, co-founder and executive editor of Cool Hunting, Mark Dytham, co-founder of global creative network PechaKucha and Mark van Iterson, global head of design of Heineken.

Van Iterson said: “Social connectivity was the inspiration behind Heineken’s brief to create a design that will mark our 140th year.  Through a pioneering design process using digital space to unite creative talent from all around the world, Lee and Rodolfo have created a premium visual concept that summarises how our world communicates through time.

“The way the design shifts the continents to create one world, in combination with the Heineken star as a planet in the centre of a galaxy unites two strong perspectives on a similar idea – the collaboration through the visual language of the design was obvious.”