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Take Five.. Design’s top 5 gin brands

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By Natalie Mortimer, N/A

July 31, 2015 | 4 min read

One category. Every two weeks. Five of the world’s most charismatic designs.

Welcome to Take 5 where The Drum, along with jones knowles ritchie (JKR) Singapore strategy director Katie Ewer, take a bi-weekly look at some of the design industry’s best imagined packaging design where you, the reader, are in control.

Every other Friday we’ll pick a theme and ask you to submit the design you feel deserves a top spot. You’ll have one week to get your entries in, the votes will be counted and the best of lot will be published the following Friday. (Make sure you scroll down to find out the next topic winging its way).

But back to today's theme; gin. Is there a spirits category that’s more full of potential and creativity, yet also so replete with the tedious codes of ‘craft’ that have become the graphic straightjacket of our times? Gin is a mixing spirit – meaning it is seldom drunk neat – so we’re less likely to choose on taste profile than we are with other categories. Design, therefore, is critically important.

Here are five brands that created charismatic personalities that are refreshingly unique and enduring.

Tanqueray 10

Tanqueray is the granddaddy of all gins. It had been doing its classy thing for decades before the gin renaissance spawned an army of artisanal wannabes. And the new(ish) Tanqueray 10 bottle is an encapsulation of its elegant, timeless beauty: half art deco icon, half clever lemon squeezer, Tanqueray 10 proves you don’t have to be weird to be wonderful in this category.

Sipsmith

Sipsmith isn’t particularly fancy: it doesn’t have a cork stopper, or a silk sash, or a metal tray to sit in, or a band of copper around its waist. It doesn’t even have a very remarkable bottle. But it does have a sense of imagination and whimsy, and though you somehow know it’s English, it’s a very Alice in Wonderland version of it. Lovely and odd.

Opihr

Thanks goodness! A gin mercifully unencumbered by modern pretensions. This one looks like it’s been distilled in the presidential suite of the Taj Mahal Royal Palace Hotel in Mumbai. Described as an ‘oriental spiced gin’, the red elephants and chintzy curtain sash tie all add to its raj-tastic vibe.

Monkey 47

This shape shifter looks like a rum, or a dodgy Victorian tincture, or perhaps even a boot polish. But of course it’s a gin, and its name comes from the number of botanicals it uses and the not-to-be-underestimated ABV. Why there is a monkey on a stamp on a medicine bottle with a German descriptor only adds to the mystique of the whole thing. And mystique is possibly the most important ingredient in making a great gin bottle.

Bombay Sapphire

Yes, it’s an oldie, but Bombay Sapphire has a visual brand language that most brands would kill for: it’s unique, rich, flexible and evocative. It’s partnership with designers from Karim Rashid and Holly Fulton to Thomas Heatherwick (who designed the brand’s extraordinary new visitor’s centre) have kept it desirable and relevant even whilst gin has become one of the most creatively competitive categories in spirits.

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