The Blechley Park Gin

Agency: Rose
Creative Director: Simon Elliott
Creative Director: Garry Blackburn
Designer: Yafet Bisrat
Project Manager: Joanna Waclawski
Photographer: Jonathan Knowles
Location: United Kingdom
Project Type: Produced
Client: Bletchley Park
Product Launch Location: Global
Packaging Contents: Gin
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Glass

Bletchley Park was once the top-secret home of the World War Two Codebreakers and the birthplace of modern information technology. Today, it is an award-winning heritage visitor attraction, operating as a charity to further the understanding of the historical achievements that took place there while exploring the contemporary challenges of a technologically complex society.

To help provide additional revenue streams, the team at Bletchley Park invited us to help them launch The Bletchley Park Gin, to sell in the museum gift shop, the on-site cafe, at special events and locally in Milton Keynes. They briefed us to create packaging which would remain consistent with the master-brand we created for them in 2013.

We learned that gin was the favourite tipple of many of the Bletchley Park veterans during the war. So we wanted to evoke their 1940s spirit of resourcefulness and referred back to the distinctive code pattern we created for the identity, to see how we could use it in a new and distinctive way.

The gin has been crafted by artisan gin specialists, Wharf Distillery, renowned for small batch production using traditional copper pots. In the spirit of Bletchley Park and its remarkable codebreakers, each of the unique botanical ingredients are hidden within the encrypted pattern around the bottle for you to discover.

Initial sales have proved hugely positive and Bletchley Park have already commissioned a second batch as well as a limited edition Christmas gin.