Devil's Grin

Brand IdentityPackaging Design

May 22

Written By Adam vicarel

Devil's Grin Gin Brand Identity and Packaging Design

Establishing the name, position, look and feel for a new kind of gin.

FULL CASE STUDY COMING SOON.

Client

Trinity River Distillery

Services

Brand Strategy: Naming, Positioning, Copywriting. Visual Identity Design: Logo, Visual Identity, Collateral. Label and Bottle Design

Credits

Creative Direction & Principal Designer: Adam Vicarel
Strategy & Copywriting: Jamie Reedy
Brand and Package Design, Production: Carly Salzman

The Opportunity

Trinity River Distillery had a remarkable formula on their hands: 70 iterations, 14 botanicals sourced across 6 continents and cut with rainwater straight from the Texas sky. What they didn't have was a name, a position, a story, or any of the visual language to bring this new gin to market. They were entering a category that had grown stale, dominated by juniper-forward gins that hadn't changed in 200 years, and increasingly dismissed by the drinkers they needed to win. The answer was not only growing in Texas the whole time, but a primary ingredient in the recipe, the mesquite bean. The mesquite tree is so tenacious and invasive that locals have long called it "the devil with roots." The opportunity here was bigger than just launching a new gin; Devil's Grin is working to reframe the entire category.

The Solution

We built Devil's Grin from the ground up: naming, positioning, storytelling, brand strategy, visual identity, packaging, bottle design, and collateral. The mesquite tree, with its deep-driving roots and thorns, became the creative backbone of the entire system. The name, thorn motif, and illustrations all derive their inspiration from mesquite tree which is referred to as “the devil with roots.” The platform "Gin Reborn" gave the product a unique point of view, grounded in the recipe's real story. The ingredients were globally sourced, the gin is Texas-made, and it’s truly unlike anything else on the shelf. Since launch, Devil's Grin has been named America's Greatest Gin at the 2025 ADI Awards, earned Best in Show at the WSWA Tasting Competition, and collected medals across handfuls of additional international competitions, allowing the brand to easily expand to new markets across the country.