New look for Illicit Gin with a nod to Glasgow’s dark past

Glasgow-based Illicit Spirits have unveiled a new look, set to be rolled out across their entire range of gins and the eagerly anticipated rum.
The lo-fi urban distillery – based in a railway arch underneath tracks just
south of Glasgow’s Central Station – has often looked to gin’s debauched past for inspiration, and the branding reboot draws on that same history.

Now the brilliantly dark new labels use appropriated iconic images – starting with Hogarth’s infamous “Gin Lane” for Illicit Spirits’ London Dry – superimposed with the company’s new logo, to create a clash between the modern and the traditional.

Owner and distiller Darran Edmond, said:
“We wanted something which was at once recognisable and yet unique, to
take something familiar and well known and put our own stamp on it. This is the approach we’ve always taken when developing our spirits, and now we’re really pleased to have a label which does that too.
From the outset, it has been our philosophy to look to the past — but with a
critical eye, without reverence or nostalgia – taking the best from history and finding a way to interpret tradition in a way that’s interesting or unexpected.”

The distillery also produces “New Tom”; a contemporary take on the Old Tom style of gin, and “Blacklist”; a peat-smoked gin. Both will undergo a similar redesign, to be revealed in the coming weeks.