OUGD603 - Starpack Collab - Luxury Vodka Brief

Bartenders are increasingly recognising vodka for its wide scope in developing a broad flavour spectrum. Subsequently, vodka is shaking off its ‘flavourless’ label and is being enjoyed as a quality drink. In the UK we drink over 58.5 million bottles of vodka each year. In total the spirits industry is worth over £3.8 billion to the retail sector and a sizeable portion of sales come from quality bottled spirits, such as champagne, brandy and whisky, often bought as gifts. Lining the shelves in spectacularly designed secondary packs, these spirits are both eye-catching and make a handsome present.

The Brief 
This brief is to develop a new and exciting pack for a fictitious vodka brand targeting the quality retail gift sector, including retail outlets spanning duty free areas at airports and high end, high street stores. You will need to develop the name, bottle label, bottle closure using aluminium and secondary metal pack made from tinplate.

Points to consider
• Marriageability with one of the two supplied vodka bottle specifications.
• Metal offers great scope for creative design using different finishes including:
   -  print finishes
   -  varnishes – high gloss, matte, crackle finish
   -  use of colour
   -  bare metal
   -  embossing and debossing

• Reusability and storage of the secondary pack.
• Shelf impact.
• Marriageability with other components – bottle closure and labelling.
• Scope to tell a story.

Materials to be used 
The secondary pack must use tinplate and the closure aluminium as the core elements, but models can be made of any appropriate material to represent the metal components. All secondary pack and closure designs must be compatible with either the specifications supplied for Bottle A or Bottle B. (Please choose either Bottle A or Bottle B for design)

Bottle A

Bottle B

For this brief I will be collaborating with one of my peers, Laura Taylor. We both really appreciate good packaging design and felt that working together would make this brief a lot quicker as well as being able to produce more designs. This brief is really exciting, and I am looking forward to coming up with ideas. 

From reading the brief I can ascertain that they would like a flavoured vodka as it mentions that they are increasing in popularity. After discussing with Laura we decided we could do a small range of different flavours of vodka. Also with the mention of buying vodka as gifts we want to make the packaging as luxurious and unique as possible so that it can look like a gift rather than a bog standard bottle of vodka. The main challenge for this brief will be to come up with the secondary packaging (the box) which will have to be made out of tinplate. This will certainly provide some interesting design elements.