Laphroaig has arguably the strongest visual identity in Scotch, with a design that has barely changed since the distillery was established in 1815. Green glass, white label, black type; a deceptively simple combination that created an iconic bottle.
It is a beautiful object, both charming and austere, and when Laphroaig approached us to create a premium version for their highly aged stock, we were slightly daunted. How could we add the presence these older whiskies deserve, without compromising the simplicity of the original design?
We clearly didn’t want to add anything to it, so we focused on the original materials, following a principle of refine or remove. The original green glass is now internal, suspended within a clear glass outer, a complex hand blowing technique that requires a gob of molten green glass to be blown inside a larger gob of molten clear glass. The outcome is a thicker base that is transparent, elevating the whisky and giving the bottle some weight. The typography is now etched directly into the bottle, allowing the paper label to go, but we didn’t want to lose the visual impact of the white label set entirely, so we moved it to the exterior of the presentation case, where it forms the window to view the box within.
A good example of less, is more.