Bud Light Uses HP Technology to Design 31M Unique Cans

With summer in full-swing, Anheuser-Busch jumped on the festival bandwagon by partnering with Mad Decent Block Party to release limited edition Bud Light Festival Cans. The Mad Decent Block Party tour will appear in more than a dozen cities in the United States and Canada, celebrating music, culture and artistry. To line up its brand with the festival, Bud Light developed 31 different packaging designs that can be transformed into 31 million unique graphics, so no two cans are alike.

Knowing that the millennial generation is always looking for a unique experience, Bud Light was looking for a way to match the unexpected experiences that music lovers enjoy every year at the Mad Decent Block Parties.

"That's where the packaging came in," said Gina Bazigian, packaging innovations manager for A-B InBev, in an article from Adweek. "So, we partnered with HP. Instead of printing these cans through conventional printing, we leveraged their HP Indigo digital press technology, and what makes that significant is that we also used their HP SmartStream Mosaic algorithm."

Based on specific design ideas provided by Bud Light, the algorithm slightly changes each can design to create a slightly different package.

The cans will be available exclusively at the music shows, in order to “capture the energy of the summer music scene,” according to a company press release. Mad Decent designed four of the custom labels, while the rest of the 16-oz. cans were designed by artists and printed using vertical-printing technology from HP.

Source: Bud Light.