Client
When
Category
Intro
Whisky lives and dies by its packaging. Every bottle is its own piece of design, and any brand operating in the category needs to find ways to translate that craft to digital channels where the actual product can't speak for itself. Agitator wanted more control over how their bottles showed up online, and a higher visual baseline to match the quality of what was inside.
Challange
Standard product photography is fine, but it locks the brand into whatever was shot on the day, with whatever lighting was available, on whatever label version existed at the time. Every new flavour, market, or language change kicks off another round of production. The challenge was to give Agitator visuals that felt as crafted as the bottle itself, and a system flexible enough to keep up with how the range would evolve.
Process
I modelled and rendered two of Agitator's bottles in Blender from the ground up, paying close attention to the material qualities that make a whisky bottle feel like a whisky bottle: glass, light, label texture, the weight of a heavy base. Beyond the craft itself, working in 3D meant the assets could be re-lit, re-labelled, and re-rendered for new flavours or new languages without going back to a photo shoot every time.
Results
In benchmark click tests, the new renders outperformed the previous imagery on click-preference, giving Agitator a stronger digital presence and a more efficient way to grow the visual library as the range expanded.