Company: Grapht
Role: Design, Creative Direction
Tools: Blender, Reality Composer, Adobe CC

TLDR: We created a gin called Grapht that donates £5 to charity. Designed a ceramic bottle from scratch in collaboration with Marylou Faure and created prototypes in 3D and AR to test with users before hitting production.

Gin for good!

Throughout 2020, my husband and I began to think differently about the things we buy, to support local businesses and charities any way we could.

Because of Covid (and dare I say Brexit) we’re becoming even more conscious of where our purchases come from, how they're made, and the impact they have on our community and the environment. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s how precious the world is and how we must strive to protect our planet and help each other prosper.

During lock-down, we started to hunt out products that were socially responsible, trying to shift our purchases to more meaningful brands.

And that’s where Grapht came in. It sparked our imagination for creating our own purpose-led product, to help spread the message of responsible living and to make a positive contribution however we can.

Test & learn

We tackled Grapht sort of like a design sprint; by experimenting, prototyping and testing. We also saw it as proof of concept before ploughing our life savings into something we had no idea would work.

We created moderated and unmoderated studies with a diverse audience of over 100 people to understand what our potential customers would look like. This research gave us the confidence to develop Grapht further and we began the arduous task of networking, sourcing and really getting to know this industry.

Trial and error

I hadn’t used 3D and AR in a project like this before, but I quickly realized these were domains that could really help us to get Grapht moving without getting out the potters wheel. For a start, we needed to tighten the purse strings by designing the bottle ourselves, and create production-ready technical drawings - yikes!

This is where 3D and AR came to the rescue because designing a bottle in 2D is very different to the real deal. I was soon experimenting with Blender and Adobe Dimension to bring everything to life.

AR also took our user testing to another level, allowing us to share our prototype with potential customers before starting development with our manufacturer.

Tap the bottle below on your iPhone or iPad to place it in AR. Cool right?

Gin, glorious gin

Whilst I can make a mean Tom Collins, we knew we didn't have the resources or knowledge (yet) to get the copper pots out. We spoke to around 20 distilleries before landing with our distillery, who are based in Yorkshire. They really understood what we were trying to achieve, and before we knew it, we were sipping samples with our pinkies out.

We describe Grapht as a classic style, London dry, packed full of scrumptious citrus and spice botanicals and we think it's absolutely delicious.

By design

We always envisaged Grapht as an opportunity to collaborate by creating one-off editions by artists. So rather than designing another trite bottle label, we ripped up the rule book to create something truly unique. Our first edition features exclusive artwork by the incredible Marylou Faure.

Less waste!

When we think about Gin—or any other product for that matter—we often forget about the lifecycle of everything that goes into it. There's always a throwaway element in almost every purchase that we leave up to the fate of our local authority - a moment on the lips a lifetime on the tips, you might say!

So we tackled this head-on and challenged the perception of the bottle itself, to create something just as precious as the liquid inside.

We banned plastic (even synthetic corks) and sourced locally, to reduce our environmental footprint wherever we could.

Our ceramic bottle is made in Stoke-On-Trent and we designed it to encourage customers to keep and re-use. And yes, refillables are on the cards ;-)