Bravery, trust, and the art of award-winning packaging

The courage it takes to be different

What distinguishes the Whimsical Watering Can from countless other gifting projects isn’t just the design, but the sequence of decisions that allowed the design to survive. At every stage, from a sketch on the back of a hotel napkin to a product sitting on airport shelves across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, someone had to choose ambition over comfort.

Paul is characteristically direct about what made it possible: “What took it from my desk to the screen was something unusual in today’s world: the passionate drive of one person at the client side. She believed in this idea so much that no matter how much we tried to temper her excitement with reality, she didn’t want to hear it. She kept pushing. And that drive infected all of us.”

Emily Ng, GTR Merchandising Lead at William Grant & Sons, put it plainly: “Hendrick’s is a brand that represents fun, adventure, disruption, and the unexpected. When it comes to packaging, everyone thinks of rigid boxes. But we wanted to achieve something more experiential by building the storytelling into the pack.”

That storytelling instinct required real engineering ingenuity to execute. The body needed to be formed, welded, and powder-coated to precisely match the gloss black of the Hendrick’s bottle. A food-grade internal filter was engineered to catch garnish leaves during pouring. A bayonet lid had to seal securely when the pack was inverted. Critical, given the barcode sat on the base. Water-transfer labels were applied by hand using laser positioning accurate to the millimetre. “You’d think there’s not much engineering in a watering can,” says Paul. “Well, you’d be surprised.”