Of late the UK juice drink market seems dominated by the likes of Innocent with their fruity smoothies and conversational style marketing. We’ve all been excited by getting on of our five-a-day’s from a small drink and then dashed down with warnings of high (if natural) sugar contents.

Mello then is a brand I’ve not heard of but who’ve recently secured a deal to appear in posh supermarket Waitrose. They make juice from melons, one with watermelon, one with cantaloup. Using some sort of fancy method they don’t pasteurise with heat and therefore claim more of the taste remains. There’s also plenty of “better for you” claims as the stuff in the fruit isn’t destroyed by the pasteurisation process, however health isn’t a key focus visible in the new branding.

To coincide with this, Ziggurat Brands have resigned the Mello logo and packaging.

Two main aspects of the brand are the square shaped logo with jigsaw fitting “L” letters and a low key melon “O”, and the melon slice geometric illustrations.

I’m a little unsure about the logo which mixes cases with caps M and L’s and a lowercase e, and the second L tucked inside the first looks awkward to my eye with it’s differing dimensions and positioning. The melon in the O is sweet enough, perhaps more cantaloup than water melon but you get that it’s fruity. That it’s not a brash consumer branded, dew encrusted soft drink type of answer is good, the lettering is saying “I’m a bit classy”. This is rolled out across the http://mellodrinks.co.uk web site which features the Adrian Frutigers‘ Didot serif font and is really quite refreshing within the sector.

The melon slices that appear on the bottles add some fun back into the whole design. They say fresh and fruity but without being crass, and are my favourite thing about the design. They’ve enough detail to be interesting but are simple enough to keep their charm.

They do result in the packaging showing two differing illustrations of melons however.

Both the packaging update and the new logo are strides ahead of their original designs which didn’t look to have much shelf presence, keeping it low key black on clear bottles, the colour supplied by the contents. The old logo font was too 1990’s futuristic and the hint at a slice of melon simply lacklustre.

Is it the kind of thing you’ll pluck off the shelf in Waitrose? Or maybe like me you don’t shop at Waitrose and you’ll stick to cartons of Calypso…