Hunter Luxury has won an AmeriStar Award for Design Excellence for its work on the Jack Daniel’s x McLaren Halo MK1 Limited Edition packaging. The presentation case, developed with Brown-Forman and McLaren and unveiled at the Miami Grand Prix, was inspired by Formula 1’s Halo safety device.
The case houses a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey bottled at 58.7% ABV. That figure pays tribute to McLaren founder Bruce McLaren’s first race car, an Austin 7 bearing the number 58.
Judges recognized the pack’s distinctive wishbone structure, inspired by the Halo device that sits above the cockpit of every Formula 1 car.
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The design emerged as Brown-Forman’s Global Design team studied McLaren’s visual and engineering language. The team explored the nose cone, rear wing and centre-lock wheels before settling on the Halo as its structural idea.
A bespoke push-button mechanism is concealed beneath the McLaren logo on top of the unit. When pressed, it releases the bottle from its fitted cradle.
“To be recognised in the Design Excellence category at the AmeriStar Awards is a major endorsement of what Halo MK1 represents: the ability of packaging to carry a brand story through structure, movement, material, and detail,” said Paul Hamilton, head of sales and marketing at Hunter Luxury.
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READ THE STORY“This was a genuinely collaborative achievement,” he added. “Our challenge was to convert that vision into a manufacturable object that embodies the presence of a trophy and the precision of automotive engineering.”
Hunter Luxury translated a flat artwork file into a three-dimensional structure across more than 20 CAD iterations. Physical prototypes were produced using FDM, SLA and DMLS processes.
The finished structure contains more than 50 components, made from eight materials using eight manufacturing processes. Its carbon fibre styling recreates reference material supplied by McLaren, while an Alcantara-inspired lining nods to the flame-retardant fabric used to protect drivers.
“There was a point when it stopped feeling like a case or a gift pack and started to feel like a piece of sculpture,” said Sam Gardner, senior art director at Brown-Forman Global Design.
The AmeriStar Awards are the Institute of Packaging Professionals’ annual competition, recognizing packages across 18 categories.
Brown-Forman acquired Jack Daniel’s parent in 1956, and the brand remains one of the world’s best-selling American whiskeys.
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