Design’s newest player is Heineken® Studio, launching a collaboration with Axel Chay
What’s more unexpected than a 160-year-old brewing institution partnering up with a contemporary French designer? Heritage meets novelty in reimagining what beer can be in contemporary culture.
The partnership between Heineken® Studio and Marseille-based designer Axel Chay is more than just another product launch, representing instead a switch in how heritage brands are approaching innovation. While brand redirection once happened in labs and board meetings, it now happens through conversation, personal perspectives, and a few beers clinking.
In recent years, global legacy brands have been struggling to stay relevant, as audiences are leaning more towards authentic and relatable realities, because of the accessibility of social media and of an exhaustion with corporate communication. The historical beer company has found a way to get closer to its customer base through local physical activations that show the colossus’ human side, giving importance to cultural exchanges and in-real-life relationships.
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Heineken® Studio launched in early 2025 as an experimental innovation hub bringing together brewing expertise with cultural tastemakers. Unlike traditional R&D centres focused on technical product improvements, the studio operates as what the company calls a “playground for experimentation“, declaring their eccentric approach to innovation. The platform aims to experiment around the beer of tomorrow, exploring new recipes, tasting modes, and reimagined rituals.
This is where Axel Chay enters the picture, not as a brand ambassador but as a genuine co-creator in the brand’s innovation process. Inspired by nights out and new connections at his favourite bars in Marseille, the collaboration consists of a custom new brew with a specially designed can, and a “Social Set” consisting of a tray with coasters and glassware. As the first invited designer to collaborate with the studio, the choice of an industrial designer instead of a graphic designer is relevant, suggesting that the brand sees beer as an experiential practice embedded in physical and social space, and not just a beverage product.
Chay’s Marseille roots and Mediterranean aesthetic brought a specific cultural lens to the collaboration with the Dutch company. The designer has gone beyond his usual working field to collaborate with Master Brewer Willem van Waesberghe in crafting a unique limited-edition lager infused with peach, pineapple, and Camargue salt, inspired by the southern French coast.
Drawing inspiration from his own personal experiences from nights spent with friends and many beers, Chay says, “This is fun and functional, and also deeply personal. At the heart of this collaboration with Heineken® Studio is how I want to connect with my friends, family and community in my town of Marseille. I created the ‘Social Set’ as a way to make socialising with my people – a sacred time for me – an easier and more seamless experience in Marseille’s packed bars. Part of this, of course, is looking good!“
The set features his signature post-modern metalwork aesthetic, translated into Heineken’s green and chrome palette. The pieces function both as barware and collectable design objects, positioning the collaboration in an overlap between utility and aspiration.
In tune with it being a local activation launched with an event in Paris at Hotel Grand Amour, the custom brew will only be available in the French market. While speaking with Joseph Brophy, the company’s Global PR and Communication Lead, he revealed that the studio’s intention is to continue doing local activations in different countries, to connect with local audiences and gather some exciting insights. While many companies have internationality and grandeur as a goal, Heineken® wants to scale down and reconnect with its people. The metric isn’t sales growth but cultural relevance and brand repositioning.
What makes the studio’s strategy distinctive isn’t just collaborating with designers, many brands do that, but how it positions the collaborations within a larger innovation architecture. Revealing an approach that is both more humble and more ambitious than a sterile R&D facility, Heineken® Studio demonstrates that heritage brands can engage with contemporary lifestyles authentically, and that innovation labs can function as cultural platforms engaged in open-ended exploration.
