At WOW's 25th anniversary exhibition, the president asked, “What do you want to do to commemorate our anniversary?” The idea proposed by Saki Kato, a WOW director and designer, was to brew beer and give it to visitors as a souvenir. Inspired by the title of the exhibition, “Unlearning the Visuals,” they established “UNLEARN” as the project’s theme, developing it into an initiative that questions how we perceive taste. Rather than simply brewing original beer and ending the project there, the team launched an initiative focused on the relationship between taste and visuals.

When tasting drinks or food, we can easily say that something is “delicious” or “a flavor I like,” but it is difficult to accurately convey the details of its taste through language. To address this, the team devised a method for participants to visually express and share the taste they experienced while drinking the beer. The result was an app with intuitive controls that allows users to place various colored shapes on a canvas and print the resulting collage as a beer label.

In a pre-launch workshop held with stakeholders, the team researched what kinds of colors and shapes could best express flavor. They found that vivid colors were chosen over nuanced colors, and that tastes are not clearly distinct, but rather blend together. Therefore, the final application was designed to include many vivid colors, while also introducing an effect function to adjust color boundaries to more accurately reproduce the impression of taste.

This project brought together a diverse team. In addition to Kato, the creator, it included planners, producers, implementation engineers, and the company's most passionate beer enthusiasts. The beer was brewed by VERTERE, a brewery in Okutama. Instead of aiming for a flavor with limited appeal, the team crafted a beer that emphasized aromatic diversity and whose flavor changes depending on the temperature. They also kept the alcohol content moderate, between 5-6%, so that more people could enjoy it.

For the label printing function, the team utilized a custom-built machine with an integrated printer. The label creation process not only enabled the visual expression of taste, but also served as a way for visitors to take home the experience itself as a souvenir.

UNLEARN BEER was a hit at the exhibition, with long lines forming throughout the event. Even for those who do not normally drink craft beer, it was well received as an experience that made them “stop and think about what taste means to them” and the new experience of combining the senses of sight and taste was highly appreciated. Although there is no right or wrong answer when it comes to taste, it is known that visuals on food and beverage packaging influence our perception of flavor—a phenomenon known as the cross-modal effect. This project allowed people to reconnect with their own subjective sense of taste and reflect on their unique sensory experiences.

The concept of this project can extend beyond beer to other foods like chocolate or coffee. Kato notes, “I'd like to experiment with other beers to see what visual differences emerge. I'm also interested in expressing taste not just through visuals, but also through words—like poetry or names.” These ideas may be incorporated into future updates.