The archive · Design & Visual · Product decision · 2025
Bruichladdich's first ultra-premium aged range signals luxury by choosing less
For its first permanent ultra-premium aged range, Bruichladdich and Thirst designed against the category's codes of weight, material and bulk — choosing less.
Bruichladdich
What it had to solve
Bruichladdich wanted to become the most values-led spirit in the world, and took that ambition into its first ever permanent, ultra premium aged range. The brief was to reimagine what luxury looks like in a category that typically demands more weight, more material and more bulk.
How it works
Bruichladdich is a distillery whose stated ambition is to become the most values-led spirit in the world. When that ambition met its first ever permanent, ultra premium aged range, the question became what luxury packaging should look like for a brand that leads with values.
The category convention is to add: more weight, more material, more bulk to signal age and price. Agency Thirst went the other way, channelling Bruichladdich's values and the codes of next gen lux to choose less — a pack built on restraint rather than accumulation.
The result was packaging that redefined the rules of luxury and reimagined what age means in the process. The work is archived in the D&AD awards archive under packaging design, with Thirst as entrant and design agency and James Cropper as production company.
Why it lands
- In a category where weight and bulk have long stood for quality, subtracting them makes the pack instantly recognisable as a different idea of luxury.
- Choosing less is a decision the audience can read on the shelf, so the packaging itself carries the brand's values-led argument.
- Codes of next gen lux gave the restraint a cultural reference point instead of making it look cheap or unfinished.
- Framing the range as a redefinition of age let the design question the very cue — heaviness — that aged whisky packaging usually leans on.
What it did
The range's packaging made restraint its statement of value: instead of more weight and material, less became the luxury cue, and 'age' was re-framed as something a lighter, more considered pack could express. The work entered the D&AD awards archive under packaging design.
What you can take
When a whole category signals worth through excess, doing the opposite can be the differentiator: restraint read as deliberate choice says more about values than any added material could.
Since then
The Luxury Redefined packaging joined the D&AD awards archive as packaging design work, crediting Thirst as the entrant and design agency, James Cropper as production company, and Bruichladdich Distillery as client. The case stands as a values-led brand taking a category convention — that premium means heavier and more — and inverting it for its first permanent ultra-premium aged range.
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