Young Dutywa creative designs Yogi Sip packaging

A 23-year-old designer from Dutywa is the creative mind behind Yogi Sip’s new packaging for its 2020 youth month national campaign.

Masonwabe Ntloko succeeds illustrator David Tshabalala — better known as Slaying Goliath — who designed the packaging for the 2019 campaign.

The Nelson Mandela University (NMU) alumnus won the brand’s Young@Art competition in June 2019, going up against designers and illustrators from across South Africa.

The brief was for the illustrators to base the packaging on their interpretative representation of the country’s youth.

Ntloko said that while designing his sole intention had been to create a concept that holistically represented young South Africans.  

“I am a huge fan of inclusiveness and inasmuch as my work is generally very Xhosa people-inspired, I didn’t want to create something that was one-dimensional and catered for a specific set of people.” 

The aim was to paint a picture of the SA youth in a progressive light, creating a legacy relevant to the present and looking ahead.

“As much as the Hector Petersons of the 1970s have been a solid symbol of what the youth of those years was about, it’s time for us to look at where we are now, where we want to be next and how we can get there.

“Of course it is important for us to know and understand our history as we are here because of it, but let’s take what we have learnt from it and move forward, taking into consideration the concept of believing in yourself as a young person,” Ntloko said.

Throughout June, consumers across the country will find the Yogi Sip 250g and 500g bottles adorned with Ntloko’s signature patterns and illustrations of hands holding up placards saying “I am the future”, “We are brave” and “We are cultured”.

At the back, the bottles contain an illustration of Ntloko, his name and a quotation that reads “You can be whoever you want to be. Dream big and work hard”.

The NMU design graduate said he hoped it would inspire the youth to take ownership of  – and shape – their lives to become who they wanted to be.

The designer already has a string of notable achievements attached to his name over the past two to three years.

His achievements include being listed among the 40 Design Indaba Emerging Creatives of 2018, being art director for Shane Eagle’s The Yellow Tour, and designing cover art for some of  South Africa’s best musicians including Simphiwe Dana, Lady Zamar, Cassper Nyovest and Mafikizolo.

 Ntloko said: “I never, ever, thought any of this was possible.

“Yes, as a person you dream and you want your life to work out a certain way, but it was never vivid enough for me to imagine myself working with Yogi Sip, a brand I’ve known since childhood.

“When I think of Yogi Sip, I remember an old man who used to sell Yogi Sip in the street and had a certain rhythm to the way he marketed and sold it. Anyone who grew up in Dutywa  knew that man.

“It’s impossible to forget how, as kids, we would enjoy Yogi Sip so much that we’d turn the bottle upside down and wait for whatever remains held on to the walls of the bottle to trickle down to our our hands and lick it off.”

Yogi Sip brand manager Thabani Khumalo said Ntloko’s work had stood out in the final round among six other designers  in the Young@Art competition.

“[Ntloko] has designed packaging specifically for the two pack sizes — 250g and 500g — which are most popular with the youth. We didn’t include the 1kg in this campaign because that size resonates more with family settings.

“The range he has designed for comes in four flavours — strawberry, mixed berry, granadilla and apricot — and that’s what consumers will be seeing in stores.” 

Khumalo said they had started sending stock orders to stores on June 1.  

The Young@Art competition to choose a designer for 2021’s youth month campaign was launched online on Monday.