Case Study:
Dayton Water Company

Most branding projects begin with a name. This one began before the name existed. The Dayton Water Company had recently discovered artesian wells in Dayton, Ohio and recognized the opportunity to bring a premium, mineral-rich water to market. The ambition was clear: Compete with established premium brands like Fiji Water and Icelandic Glacial. What the client did not yet have was a product name, a visual identity, or a label.

That is an unusual starting point. It is also an opportunity that does not come along often. When a client hands you creative latitude at the naming stage, before any visual direction has been set, the work becomes about more than design. It becomes about defining what the product is, what it means, and how it should feel in someone's hand.

The Client

The Dayton Water Company is an Ohio-based water company with access to natural artesian well water sourced in Dayton, Ohio. Artesian water is naturally filtered as it moves through layers of rock before reaching the surface, a process often associated with exceptional purity and a high mineral content beneficial to health and hydration. That made it an ideal foundation for positioning the product as a premium bottled water brand. The client's goal was to position this water as a premium, organic product, distinct from standard filtered or purified water brands, and competitive with the category leaders in high-quality natural water.

My Role

Art Director, Senior Designer, and Brand Naming Consultant
The scope of this engagement covered product naming, typographic exploration, label concept development, and four fully realized label designs presented as the final creative recommendations. The client had proposed "Aquafore" as a starting name but was not committed to it, and asked for alternatives, most incorporating the word "Aqua" as a directional guideline. Beyond naming, the full visual direction of the product, its imagery, color palette, typography, and overall aesthetic, was developed from the ground up.

Part One: Naming the Product

The names developed for the Dayton Water Company product line were: Aquafore, Aquafore Pure, AquaDay, AquaDay Pure, Artesian Well, and Artesian Springs.

The "Aqua" prefix does specific work in this category. It signals water immediately and internationally, it reads as clean and contemporary, and it creates a natural platform for product line extensions like "Pure" variants. The artesian-named options took a different direction, anchoring the brand in the specific origin story of the water rather than a constructed brand name. Both approaches were valid. Each served a different vision of what the brand could be.

Part Two: Label Explorations

Before the four final label directions were developed, an extensive exploration phase tested different typographic treatments, visual concepts, and color approaches. The work ranged widely, from evocative figurative imagery to minimal typographic compositions, from deep ocean blues to the blue-green of tropical water.

Typography became a central part of the exploration. Consumer product branding, particularly in the premium beverage space, has a different relationship with type than most design work. Typeface selection became a primary design element rather than a supporting one, with each direction testing how typography alone could communicate a distinct brand personality.