Coca-Cola at the Design Museum

To celebrate its 125th anniversary, Coca-Cola has just opened a new display on the history of its visual identity at the Design Museum in London...

The exhibition fills the Design Museum's glass tank and features some rarities from the Coke archives, commonly housed in a vault in the Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta. The display also shows that while differently shaped Coke bottles have come and gone, the brand's visual identity has survived largely unchanged in 125 years. 

The Coca-Cola logo itself was created by Frank Robinson in 1886 and was written out in Spencerian script because that was the favoured typeface of accounting folk at that time. Robinson was Coca-Cola inventor John S Pemberton's book-keeper.

One of the stand-out pieces in the tank (though designers will love the rare design manuals and identity guidelines on show) is the Raymond Loewy-designed fountain dispenser, shown above. First made in 1947, it resembles a sleek speedboat engine.

Occupying the rear of the Design Museum's tank is a display of several Coca-Cola bottles, charting the subtle changes in shape that have occurred since the straight-sided Hutchinson bottle launched in 1899.

When first designed, the now more familiar curvy frame of the Coke bottle was actually a reference the shape of the cocoa bean (though the bean has nothing to do with the drink) and the form has moved in and out of fashion ever since.

Take a virtual tour the Coca-Cola archives at theverybestofcocacola.com and get across to Shad Thames in London for a close-up look at the objects on display.

The Coca-Cola exhibition is on at the Design Museum until July 3.

In the foreground, above: a sheet of Coca-Cola logos applied in different perspectives.

This dispenser is one of the oldest objects in the Coca-Cola archive, from 1886. It dispensed syprup that was then mixed with carbonated water.