buying gin bottles 12/07/23

The best thing for this stage of my project now is to 'get physical'! This means buying the standard gin bottle shapes that I want to develop and etching onto them to see 1. How it looks, 2. how it works with lighting, 3. If the designs I envisioned will work with the etching process.

I will also need to look into machine etching and how this process works and if it is better than hand etching.

Hand etching will give the bottles more value as they will be bespoke pieces, however this may not be the best solution for this business as if there is a way to machine etch the design the same on all bottles this will speed up the process and may give a more professional finish.

I decided on using bottles by The Bottle Jar Store which are 700ml Belleville bottles. I hope that this shape will cast interesting lighting up the bottle shaft and that the smoothness of the bottle will allow for an interesting etched design.

Logo 10/7/23

Due to the delivery time for the bottles I decided to start the logo design earlier than planned as this allowed me to spend more time on the bottle development once they arrive.

I decided to do two versions of the logo design - 1 without colour which would work for etching and the other more suited to advertising with a splash of colour on it.

I communicated with the client a couple of times during the design process, who stated he liked the idea for the berries being incorporated into the logo in some way. I looked at how I coul have the berries become part of the 'C' and wrap their way around it to give a more fluid affect.

The 'CG' stands for companions Gin, with the juniper berries showing the base flavour of the gin. The client wanted an elegant design, which I think is captured in the style of the letters. The next step will be to create a typeface for the rest of 'Companions' which fits with the design of the logo.

The logo is likely to be a lot smaller etched onto the gin bottles and therefore I will need to consider whether less detail is required - particularly in the leaves so that the logo has the desired effect. With the etching, if I tried to achieve too much detail on a small scale the design may look blurry and unrecognisable.

Sketchbook page