joshua davis: remix artwork for heineken

joshua davis’ remix artwork for heinekenimage © the artist, courtesy of heineken

american digital designer joshua davis helps heineken celebrate its 140th anniversary by creating an artwork, in which he has been given total freedom to explore and utilize the dutch brewing company’s history of creative assets, creating a remix graphic of past logos and of course, the distinctive heineken red star. this collaboration comes as part of davis’ role as one of the judges of the 2013 ‘future bottle design challenge‘ hosted by the beer brand whose theme for this year’s competitionis ‘remix our future’. he joins other jury members mark dytham, co-founder of pecha kucha; and evan orensten, editor at cool hunting

when asked what interests him about remixing davis responded:‘remixing is a big part of my process – nothing ever really finishes – there’s always some sort of mutation or hybrid – there’s something I add to generate some kind of aesthetic or maybe I feed different artwork, or maybe I do something different with the colours so that really the project mutates into something else. and then that mutates into something else. I have code that I’ve been working on for 6 years and over the course of 6 years, the composition that programming outputs is drastically different from day one as opposed to today. so remix for me is saying how can I take an original idea and evolve it into something new that’s unexpected, and that’s what remix is for me. that happens across my work every day.

digital designer joshua davisimage courtesy of heineken

for davis, the excitement about seeing the heineken archive was in being able to immerse himself completely into the brand’s culture,and selecting what to use. ‘for me it is like treasure hunting. for me the fun is finding the forms that I know I can work well with. it’s like going to a garage sale and hunting through someone’s stuff (…) – finding what I think is going to be something invaluable and showing it,’ he says.

a video captures joshua davis at his long island studio discussing his interpretation of the design briefvideo courtesy of heineken

the official brief of the 2013 ‘future bottle design challenge’ presented to participants is:remix our future – ‘we want you to remix our future, inspired by our past. with 140 years of heineken evolution to work with, your design could be our next limited edition bottle. create our future. become part of our history.’

within the interactive design hub – ‘your future bottle‘ – of the competition, hundreds of heineken’s historic visuals are available, including the first bottle labels and iconic early 20th century ads, for participating designers to envision their own markfor the global brand. ‘while we’re constantly looking ahead, we never forget our DNA – seeing inventive ways to draw on our evolutionto create something new for the future. this ethos has helped to make heineken so iconic over the course of its 140 years and we think remix is a great theme to involve designers from all over the world, giving the freedom to delve into our past and create their own take on our future,’ says mark van iterson, heineken’s global head of design.

the competition is open to designers anywhere in the world, inviting them to create their ‘remixed heineken bottle of the future’.if you’re interested in entering, this is your last chance, as submissions closes on the 1st of march, 2013.

for more information on how to participate, visit: www.yourfuturebottle.comand watch the video below:

heineken ‘future bottle design challenge’ 2013video courtesy of heineken

the top 30 crowd-sourced designs will be exhibited at milan design week in april 2013, and the overall winner will have the unique opportunityto have their design realized as heineken’s special 2013/2014 limited edition bottle to be sold around the world. the winning design will beremixed by joshua davis whose art will be used to create a gift-pack to house the selected bottle.

check out the concept behind last year’s winner, rodolf kusulas of mexico:

2012 winner rodolfo kusulas on his limited edition bottle designvideo courtesy of heineken

a look at some images from the heineken archive to serve as muses for competition participants:

iconic heineken bottle packagingimage courtesy of heineken

‘STR-UV’ bottleimage courtesy of heineken

vintage heineken advertising: pin-up girl (left) and 1928 olympics ad (right)images courtesy of heineken