Shut your eyes, and I bet you can describe the singled-out sensation of pouring soda out of a fresh ii-liter bottle. When you lot pour your starting time glass, it's this sturdy merely unwieldy torpedo in your easily, glugging and fizzing its way into your glass. Somewhere around ii or three glasses, you detect the right balance. Only as you pour your last glass, and the canteen begins to empty, its structure begins to plummet, and pouring the last few ounces is as tricky as the first.

First designed in 1970 past PepsiCo and improved into the 1990s, the two-liter bottle is an imperfect mainstay of the soft drink industry. But today, later xxx years of being unchanged, the two-liter is getting a consummate makeover. PepsiCo is beginning the rollout of a curvier new bottle that'south easier to grip and rest in your mitt, while consuming slightly less plastic in the process. The update volition come to all its major soft drinkable brands.

[Photo: PepsiCo]

"You retrieve, as a designer, how difficult is information technology to redesign a bottle?" muses Mauro Porcini, SVP and chief pattern officer at PepsiCo. "The reality is, when you demand to redesign a canteen with this scale . . . and this touch on on the world and business, information technology is probably one of the well-nigh hard projects I e'er faced in my career."

Porcini isn't exaggerating about the scale. The two-liter canteen is still wildly pop; in fact the visitor sells the aforementioned amount in volume in both the 12 oz. can and two-liter formats. The redesign first began in 2018 as PepsiCo decided it was time to admit consumer pain points.

The original two-liter had a circumference of 13.4 inches, while PepsiCo says the average hand is between 7 inches and 8.half dozen inches when grasping. Merely glancing at that gulf demonstrates why two-liters are then hard to manage. The company's beginning goal was to meliorate these ergonomics. "How you concord it, pour information technology, how to brand the feel better from a usability and ergonomic standpoint," says Porcini. "That'due south the cardinal anchor: We wanted to make the product more useful."

[Photo: PepsiCo]

The design team, coordinating with the business organization team, analysts, and R&D, began to dream up alternatives. That meant sketching thousands of designs, and rapidly prototyping hundreds of designs with 3D printing. It's a process that's far more complicated than only coming up with a new silhouette. Because these bottles need to be durable while also consuming every bit little plastic as possible, the plastic thickness varies through the entire canteen, reinforced where information technology's necessary and removed where it'south not. And because they hold liquid that's pressurized, they are managing forces ballooning their way from the inside out.

[Photo: PepsiCo]

"You may design something really cool in a 3D-printed prototype," says Porcini, "but you lot put the bodily liquid inside, and y'all lose all the details considering of the pressure."

PepsiCo's final shape is a mix of old and new. Up summit, it looks similar the two-liter you know. Then about 2-thirds of the way down, it curves in to 10.4 inches, which is technically 25% slimmer than the standard 2-liter but feels to me like even more than. Then the foot of the bottle tapers in over again, impressively balancing a pattern that appears summit heavy.

[Photo: Pepsi Co]

The shape itself is a technical accomplishment considering, while it doesn't use less plastic than the one-time bottle, it also doesn't use more. As Porcini explains, the claiming is managing the right amount of plastic throughout the bottle, which varies from 0.008 to 0.012 inches thick, to minimize waste. The very pinnacle of the canteen, well-nigh the cap, has to be thicker to support the construction. Around the label, they tin can thin it out. But then in that gripping surface area, the plastic needs to get thicker again to support both the construction of the curve and the force per unit area of your hand. PepsiCo needed this grip area to be as sparse as possible to brand the bottle easier to grab without making its plastic footprint even worse. What they came up with was external detailing—actress ridges of plastic that reinforce the plastic in this gripping area, similar scaffolding.

[Photo: PepsiCo]

These ridges are too a means of brand expression, as each different soda bottle features its ain unique grip shapes. Archetype Pepsi looks like a wave, while Mount Dew is nearly similar a jagged lightning commodities.

The result volition make you lot rethink how you pour a two-liter. I scissure open a Pepsi canteen that the company sent, and squeeze information technology to pour. I realize that I'm squeezing too hard, overexerting myself with the ii-liter muscle memory of yore. I really bend the bottle inward a bit. But when I let the canteen to tip in my hand, information technology pours with plenty of support and an intuitive balance. Emily Silver, vice president of innovation and capabilities for PepsiCo Beverages North America, says that consumer testing has shown ninety% of people find this new bottle easier to hold and pour—and most can do and so 1-handed. "We feel like we accept a winner," she says.

[Photo: PepsiCo]

Equally for the bottle's overall store presence, that was a concern, too. "We wanted to stand proud on a shelf," says Porcini. "[Information technology was nearly] creating something memorable, own-able, so if you lot recall of Pepsi, you think about that special shape." While the new canteen is technically a flake thinner and taller than the sometime bottle, these differences are so slight that they don't permit more actual product to squeeze onto store shelves. However, designers did move the label upwards on the bottle, which accommodates the fact that many shelves have a small prophylactic rails that blocks the branding.

And in mayhap the virtually impactful update of this whole redesign, the new characterization is actually 24% smaller than the sometime i, which means slightly less plastic is used in each bottle as a result.

When I ask why PepsiCo didn't address the unabridged two-liter redesign focusing on sustainability rather than ergonomics, I receive a few different answers. Silver points to PepsiCo's wider stated ecology goals, mentioning that this is in line with them, and that PepsiCo is investing in recycling infrastructure to recapture more viable plastic. Porcini points to PepsiCo'southward wide portfolio of brands, similar Soda Stream, which leverages reusable bottles and allows people to carbonate the water from their ain tap.

Only ultimately, Porcini concludes on a point that he brings up oft during conversations, that practiced design is not just about realizing an idyllic concept or thought in a studio, only implementing new products in a way that responds to both the desires of consumers and the viability of a business. "There's an [environmental] effort, but information technology's an effort that's a journey. We demand to take the consumer with the states. If we fail in delivering something that'south engaging and functional for consumers, at the finish of the day, nosotros will fail also on our sustainability goals."