Some projects invite you to think outside the box. Dada Chapel invited Stranger & Stranger to throw the box out entirely. Nestled in the heart of Ghent, this unconventional distillery takes its cues from the Dadaist movement, where absurdity reigns and logic takes a back seat. When the design firm first encountered their spirits, including one distilled from beets, they knew this would be no ordinary branding exercise. Designing for Dada Chapel meant embracing the unexpected. From bottle shape to brand language, Stranger & Stranger followed instinct over rules, art over convention, and curiosity over commerciality. The result? A visual identity that doesn’t just support the spirit—it is the spirit.
By: Kevin Shaw, Founder, Stranger & Stranger
An atypical and dissenting distillery in the heart of Ghent in Belgium, Dada Chapel is a ‘house for free minds’ where it’s possible to deviate from well-trodden paths. Inspired by the Dadaist art movement, which rejected logic, reason, and traditional artistic values while embracing irrationality and absurdity, Dada Chapel distills unusual spirits. We’ve been designing liquor bottles for decades, but we’ve never come across a spirit distilled from beets before.
This overtly creative approach to the distillation process certainly inspired us to deviate from well-trodden paths in branding. The bottle shape came easily and reflected the shape of the doors and windows of the chapel, but after that, everything came under our creative umbrella line—“In Odd We Trust—” which we had embossed into every bottle as a founding statement.
Instead of one brand logo, we developed a whole suite to be used as and when the creative mood required. Each product label, although united by a similar creative DNA, was free to creatively, absurdly, or irrationally express the content of the bottle.
The result is a brand that lives in Dadaism.
Formed in 1994, Stranger & Stranger specializes in the branding and packaging of alcoholic beverages. Stranger is one of the leading firms in this field, with studios in London, New York, and San Francisco, and advises everyone from large corporations on global brands all the way down to one-person startups. Stranger labels are on over a billion bottles and cans, win numerous awards, and help create brands worth billions of dollars.
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