Existing South African Craft Gins
WESTCLIFF GIN
I chose to work with Westcliff Gin as the brand and an alcoholic beverage has a deep and rich backstory inspired by South African heritage.
The Existing Brand
Westcliff Gin, a handcrafted, copper-distilled gin, was founded on the South African Gold Rush of 1888. Heavily infused with South Africa bush-veld botany and tones of vanilla, the carefully, small batch, crafted copper distilled gin from Linbro Park, Johannesburg - South Africa has, won numerous awards during its time.
The gin is considered to have a posh name, however, the idea behind it was to bottle the the flavour and smell of Johannesburg’s man made forest. The flavour is a green floral that speaks to the Jacaranda trees in spring found in the Northern suburbs of Johannesburg.
Gin arrived in Johannesburg (most predominentially the wealthy Westcliff area) shortly after the discovery of gold in 1884. Westcliff gin is inspired by this rich heritage of gold flowing through the veins of this landscape, skilfully infused with botanicals that are native to Africa.
Some Experimentation
The beginning of the project involved a lot of experimentation with various processes and mediums. The first few weeks involved a lot of ideation and exploration into different label designs and concepts.
The Redesign
Inspiration & Exploration
Vintage labels, tags, and medicine bottles
Reference: Kyle's Labels Pin Board
I was heavily inspired by "old-school" vintage postal labels and tags, used on postage parcels, medicine bottles and travel bags. The reason for going forward with this idea was because it resonates with the 1884 Gold Rush story of Johannesburg and explores historical paper graphic design and historical printing methods. The aged concept and inspiration has a beautiful look and feel to it, allowing for the backstory to be enriched through the redesigned labels.
Botany / Botanical science sketches and drawings
Reference: Kyle's Botany Pin Board
Another inspirational concept, which would be applied to the mixed media label, was botanical/flora science sketches and studies. I explored a variety of different styles of sketching and recording of botany, looking at the use of colour, line and texture incorporated into the sketches and studies.
The New Design
Process Work
For the traditional label design, I explored a range of traditional techniques to create the redesigned label. Such as; a letter press, stamping and ink techniques, calligraphy, paint and using a typewriter.
For the mixed media, I looked at working with lino-printing which was based off of a few floral sketches that I had created which were inspired by botanical science studies and drawings. The floral image you see above is one of the key ingredients to the Westcliff Gin, Juniper. The other element of the mixed media design was digital manipulation and typography. The label makes use of the typefaces Megan June and Garamond.
Traditional Label
Above, you see typography from the letter press and typewriter for the traditional and mixed media label.
Digital
Here is a set of initial ideas I came up with, which were purely digital, but were not used as final deliverables.
Mixed Media
Physical Mock-ups & Photography
Thank you!
