Package Design - March 2014 - 17

hard to render because when it
becomes real it picks up light and different characteristics, differently than
you can quite imagine."
They kept the colors for the three
expressions-blue for blanco, gold for
reposado, and bronze for añejo. Tequila
el Jimador comes in three basic expressions: blanco (unaged), reposado
("rested") and añejo (aged), and it must
be made from 100% blue agave from the
delimited Tequila region of Mexico.
The team then chose a lighter and more
vibrant version and selected metallic
substrates that allowed overprinting for
the right shine. "Metalized substrates

that makes not only the label a little
sleeker but also works better in other
communications," he says.
The bottle is a proprietary design fabricated from crystal clear lime glass by
Vitro glass in Guadalajara, Mexico. The
new style maintains many of the previous bottle's elements, but kicked up a
notch. "The body of the bottle is slightly
modified but preserves its integrity," says
Cardenas. "It's more stylized, the corners
are a bit sharper around the shoulders
with a thicker pedestal base on the bottom that gives it this really bold and
strong and masculine feel to it."
They also replaced the letter J on the

"as the light hits [the jimador], it gives a stronger persona
to the icon itself. Having the lower label wrapping around is
a good way to frame it and put the icon on a pedestal."
-Johnny Cardenas, design director at Brown-Forman.

El Jimador's new, sleek design aims to speak
to its core fans and new tequila drinkers

bottle to a sculpted and embossed glass
representation. The label, which took
up the front of the bottle in the old
design, was diminished and moved
down so that it's now a narrow band that
wraps around the lower half of the
entire bottle. "As the light hits [the jimador], it gives a stronger persona to the
icon itself," says Johnny Cardenas,
design director at Brown-Forman. "Having the lower label wrapping around is a
good way to frame it and put the icon on
a pedestal."
Translating the jimador figure from
an illustration to sculpted glass with the
right level of detail was quite a challenge, says Cardenas. He commissioned
artist Brad White to create a sculpture
in clay from the illustration, which was
then digitized. "We didn't know exactly
what it would look like," says Colvin.
"That's kind of the nature of glass. It's

allow you to add some sheen and some
lights, and the younger color cues livened it up," says Cardenas.
They decided to add decorative patterning on the neck wrapper and a band
on the lower section of the label to "add
a layer of interest to the brand," says
Colvin. They selected a graphic depiction of agave plants and a coa, the tool
used by the jimadores to harvest the
agave. The design is printed in black on
the color portion of the label, and in the
relevant color on the black neck
wrapper.
The typeface was also changed for
both aesthetic and practical purposes,
says Colvin. "We tried to honor the general gestures of the existing typeface,
but making it a little stronger, giving it a
little more polish and not making it too
sharp," he explains.
Moving the world "el" from on top of
"Jimador" to the left of the J makes for a
cleaner presentation, says Colvin, and
to create a simpler brand language.
"Even something as subtle as taking the
el off the top and moving it to the side,
it becomes more of a unified element

shoulders and cap with the intertwined
"CH" that denotes Casa Herradura,
makers of el Jimador (el Jimador is one
of three tequilas from Casa Herradura).
"We decided to use that as not only an
element that provided another connection to el Jimador's roots, but also gives
it another element of detail that gives a
bit more refinement," says Colvin.
The new el Jimador is the result of
fine-tuning many details to create a look
that will still be recognized by the tequila's fans. "It's a major facelift and the
package is now more aligned with the
quality of the liquid inside the bottle,"
says Cardenas. PD
For articles on similar topics, visit the
Wine & Spirits channel on PackageDesignMag.com.

For more inFormation, visit
For more information, visit
Cue Inc., www.designcue.com
Vitro S.A. de C.V., www.vitropackaging.
com

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