Red Harbor Rum – Package Design

HOOK helped select a bottle and design the label for Red Harbor Rum. We labeled this new rum a “Museum Rum” because the distiller set out to create a rum that had a similar taste and characteristics as rum did during the American Revolution in Charleston, South Carolina. This new rum is even aged the same way it would have been done in 1776.

Our goal was to create packaging that looked as if it were plucked from a history museum. We studied museums and culled art from real colonial relics. Typography was derived from pre-Revolutionary South Carolina paper money. The logo stamp is a reinterpretation of a British tax stamp from 1765, the same stamps used to tax American Colonies. We hand drew all of the typography and ornaments and printed them on old paper before rescanning press-ready files. The rescanning was done to naturally reduce the sharpness of the label. The Red Harbor Rum monogram was added to the bottle as a three-dimensional wax seal. The rum itself was inspired by the rich rum history of Charleston. Both historians and rum drinkers are sipping and smiling.