Some elements of the new identity are inspired by the architecture of the brand’s new home in Edinburgh’s city centre, The Arches.
The Glasgow team of international design studio D8 has designed a new brand world for Edinburgh Gin, supporting the redesign of its core range bottles, which happened back in 2023.
The previous redesign project included new glassware, logo and labelling. To be able to fully launch this, the gin needed a new brand world that could take it into this next era of evolution.
D8 has worked with Edinburgh Gin since 2019 on a number of projects, including its previous brand development and guidelines. According to the studio’s design director, Emma Durnan, D8 was very happy to be asked to work on the project.
She reveals that the brief was based on some research findings and strategy recommendations that D8 had developed for another brief earlier in the year, explaining how the design team built upon this and brought many of these ideas to fruition.
With this project, D8’s scope was to develop key product visuals that could be applied to many touchpoints, as well as a toolkit of supporting assets, templates and comprehensive guidelines. Not only this, but the studio was also working on the development and extension of Edinburgh Gin’s ready-to-drink can range, the visual identity for the new distillery and visitor centre, and labelling for further line extensions.
“This meant we were fully immersed in the brand for over a year, which was really helpful in terms of ensuring that everything we were creating felt aligned whilst the guidelines were in progress,” says Durnan.
The whole visual strategy is underpinned by the brand pillar ‘Filled with Wonder’ and involves 3D-rendered key visuals at its core. This approach was chosen to showcase the beauty of the bottles while bringing a sense of magic and communicating the story or ‘occasionality’ of each product.
D8 also saw the value in visualising key serves with each product, providing the consumer with reasons to buy and creating cocktail suggestions. Durnan explains how they felt that a 3D rendered approach was the perfect solution as it allowed the design team to build “really rich, creative, sometimes almost hyper-real sets”, which incorporated wondrous creatures such as butterflies and dragonflies as well as bubbles, botanicals and fruit.
She adds: “A good example is the EG Liqueurs visual in which the bottles and botanicals are floating to communicate the bubbly and light Spritz serves they are designed for.
“We are lucky to have a very talented 3D visualisation team inhouse at D8 (including Rosa Ahtiainen), and so we were able to take the time to really experiment with content, compositions and lighting to make each visual unique yet aligned with common elements throughout.”
Another notable asset is the arch, which is taken from the architecture of the new brand home in Edinburgh city centre, The Arches. In some of the visuals, it has been designed as a portal to the story behind the liquid, while in others, it simply acts as a central focal point, which Durnan says creates “depth and consistency across the images”.
Taking the rendering approach also gave the studio a practical advantage, as the team could add to the images when required, such as by including other products or changing serves.
One of the biggest challenges was ensuring that all the rendered elements looked real and polished, but D8 overcame that by taking the time to try different assets, additions and lighting. “We also had to create some layered versions which could be adapted outwith render software for use in other applications, but again, with experimentation and care, we were able to provide exactly what was required,” Durnan adds.
Some of the graphic assets were inherited from the bottle redesign, such as the logo, the monogram and the typefaces.
Durnan describes the previously mentioned arch as “an obvious ownable asset given the architecture of the new brand home,” which D8 designed with flexibility in mind. It ultimately gives in-house and external agencies the freedom to represent this in any way they see fit for their project.
So far, it’s been used on trade stands, event graphics, and retail stands, but D8 is full of ideas about how it might be used in photography and film, too.
Edinburgh Gin’s colour palette was greatly simplified and stripped back to a trio of core brand colours and a few sub-brand identifiers. Durnan notes that the key Teal colour has been a part of the brand for years and continues to be a dominant asset.
“Finally, we also rendered some individual 3D assets such as creatures and botanicals, which can be freely applied to designs along with the other graphic assets in the toolkit,” she says.
Alongside Durnan and Ahtiainen, creative director Adrian Carroll, account director Rhona Macaulay, strategy and copy director David Shanks and illustrator Linda Tervet also worked on the project.
