L’eau des vivants distillery

A new visual identity with different bottles for L’eau des vivants, a traditional French distillery from Lyon-Beaujolais. The distillery’s founder, Florent Vilisques, pays particular attention to the ingredients – they are carefully chosen and used, with the idea of keeping a consistency with the local habits, and the regional species.

In order to account for this fineness and this authenticity, we have elaborated a complete and illustrated artistic direction. It was important to reach passionate people with a strong typographic message, counterbalanced with elegant details in illustrations. Theses graphical contrasts bring deepness and a level of lecture to better discover the different levels of ingredients that composes the bottle. Each range is worked with a different colour and illustrated universe in order to have its own identity. This is a collective and creative approach which allowed the collaboration between several types of job to bring life to these products! Cheers!

I used a French condensed typeface to allow a great flexibility. With its five widths, Origin Super Condensed can be used different mediums to have an efficient typeface footprint that adapts very well to the constraint of a seven-letter mark. Frequently used in the packaging world or paper-making industry because of its accuracy, elegance and clarity: Sackers Gothic was my choice to contrast with the main typeface.

Adobe Jenson is Robert Slimbach’s modern interpretation of the 15th century original created by Nicolas Jenson, a French printer and engraver. I thought that this typeface, classical in appearance, but also traditional and with imperfect aspects, would be perfectly suited to the body text.

Illustrations by Nono Ampuy and photographs by At the design table.