At a time when Asahi Super Dry is expanding its global footprint, Havas London was tasked with building a visual system that could unify the brand without flattening its character.
The result, created in collaboration with Havas Creative Network agencies across Asia, Australia, and North America, is Seek What Is Unique – a global platform that connects Japan’s best-selling beer with its roots, while giving it the tools to speak consistently across markets.
The design system was crafted to respond to the brand’s need for scalable coherence.
For years, the beer’s visual world had suffered from inconsistency and fragmentation, challenges that couldn’t be solved by a single, dapper campaign. What Asahi needed instead was something more enduring – a repeatable, flexible visual engine capable of translating across markets, formats, and touchpoints.
Havas London’s refreshed design system for Asahi Super Dry
“We need to move away from the idea of a consistent look and feel, and instead become obsessed with a consistent feel,” says Lorenzo Fruzza, chief design officer at Havas London.
“A ‘look and feel’ mindset traps you in guidelines, straightjackets and templates. The harder – and more rewarding – job is making the brand feel the same on TikTok as it does out-of-home, or in a real-world experience.”
This focus on feel over surface signals a wider shift in how Havas London sees design’s role – not as aesthetic veneer, but as structural thinking embedded at the core of modern advertising.
“I’ve spent the past 20 years fighting for design’s place at the table,” says Fruzza.
“We’re finally in a position where design has a real voice – not as decoration at the end, but as structure from the start. My team sits upstream, in the same conversations as strategy and comms, because design’s job isn’t to make things pretty; it’s to codify creativity, to work out how ideas break apart and come back together.”
Havas London’s refreshed design system for Asahi Super Dry
He adds that many agencies still misunderstand what it means to “put design at the centre.” “It means inviting design thinking in at the beginning,” he explains.
Havas London put this principle into practice for Asahi Super Dry, developing the brand world and campaign as two sides of the same system – each anchored by the brand’s defining idea, Seek What Is Unique.
The line draws directly from Asahi Super Dry’s origins. When it launched in 1987, its crisp Karakuchi taste – a Japanese term for a clean, dry flavour – broke away from the sweetness typical of other beers. This differentiation helped redefine Japan’s beer market, embedding that instinct for distinction deep within the brand.
Today, that ethos shapes not just Asahi’s storytelling, but the very structure of its design language. Across product photography and the graphic system, the team uses dynamic angles and intersecting perspective planes to lead the viewer’s eye, and draw them in.
The tagline, set vertically
Even the tagline follows this principle. It’s set vertically – a subtle nod to Japanese typography, but also a deliberate moment of intrigue within the layout.
“It changes the rhythm of reading,” Fruzza explains. “In the UK, we read left to right, but here the viewer’s eye moves downward, leading them through the message and finally to the logo. They’re small decisions, but all of them stem from that same idea – what does Seek What Is Unique mean for the design system itself?”
At every point in the creative process, Havas London set up guides and codes instead of rigid rules. Three of these became central.
The team leaned into retrofuturism, which gives the brand its cool, cinematic tones and subtle neon accents; a focus on minimalism, seen in the pared-back compositions and use of red against silver; and juxtaposition, drawn from the precision of the craft and the vibrancy of the drinking experience, a tension that runs through every touchpoint.
Havas London’s refreshed design system for Asahi Super Dry
Together, they give the identity both discipline and energy – a system that feels alive rather than locked down.
These codes helped define how the brand behaves, ensuring it could flex across formats without repeating itself.
“The enemy in such projects is the ‘matching luggage’ mentality,” says Fruzza. “It’s toxic and reductive – the idea that your TV spot should look exactly like your print or social work. Consistency shouldn’t mean uniformity; it’s about creating a shared feel, not identical executions.”
When refreshing the design system, the team chose to preserve two sacred elements – the logo and the silver – both carrying deep brand equity.
Every new addition was designed to work with these anchors. Red was introduced to complement the silver – subtle rim lighting in photography, or sleek accents appearing on ice buckets and beer pumps.
The red hue is used across touchpoints
Meanwhile, the team used the logo as the foundation for the Apex graphic framework, the visual glue that binds the system together. Its sharp, peak-like ‘A’ form became the starting point for a geometric pattern that extends across formats, from campaign visuals to physical brand experiences.
Each of these elements comes together to form a scalable structure that primes the brand for growth. Ultimately though, as Fruzza says, the success of such a system lies in its ability to not just reach new audiences, but move them.
The Apex pattern in action
“I want to know that the work is clear and enticing enough that more people buy the beer,” he says. “But I also want to know that the tone has landed – that people feel Asahi is an exciting, premium brand. Design sits somewhere between the functional and the emotional, and the impact should show on both sides.”
In many ways, Asahi Super Dry proves for Fruzza that design can no longer play a supporting role in advertising – it deserves equal footing.
“Design has always been the poor cousin of creative in advertising,” he says. “But this project has changed that for me. I can now confidently talk to the industry about why design needs to be valued more – and this gives me a cast-iron example of that. It’s not words anymore. Here’s the proof.”
Havas London’s refreshed design system for Asahi Super Dry
Havas London’s refreshed design system for Asahi Super Dry
Havas London’s refreshed design system for Asahi Super Dry