BARMAT
Industry
Spirits
Location
India
Year
2025
Service
Problem:
We were tasked with designing a distinctive glass gin bottle that would capture the identity of Himachal Pradesh and translate its natural heritage into a premium, manufacturable product.
Solution:
We drew inspiration from one of Himachal Pradesh’s most iconic native animals—the snow leopard. Using the markings of a real snow leopard as reference, we carefully hand-designed each individual rosette to create an authentic pattern across the glass bottle.
The artwork was then digitised and engineered for production. Working closely with the bottle manufacturer, we adapted our design into a machine-ready file compatible with large-scale glass manufacturing—preserving the character and detail of the original concept while ensuring it could be produced consistently at scale.
The Design
Journey
Unlike most product-development processes, this bottle could not be prototyped, reviewed and refined before production. The digital design had to go directly into the creation of an expensive manufacturing mould—the same mould that would produce the entire commercial batch. Until glass was poured, there was no physical way to see or test the final result. Every decision therefore had to be resolved virtually, with no margin for trial and error.
More than 50 unique snow-leopard rosettes were developed before the final composition was achieved. Each marking required the right shape and engraving depth, while its connection to the next had to follow the bottle’s curved surface and appear naturally random without becoming visually uncontrolled. The completed pattern then had to be reversed to form the negative geometry of the mould, ensuring it would emerge correctly when impressed into glass.
The final challenge was translating the design into the factory’s machine-specific software—a system incompatible with the conventional 3D tools used by most design studios. We had to adapt our process, learn the production platform and rebuild the design in a format the manufacturer’s machinery could execute accurately.
This was not surface decoration. It was the precise coordination of artistry, engineering and manufacturing—undertaken with the knowledge that the first manufactured bottle also had to be the final one.
