Everyone involved
Concept and designCreative direction, packaging design and print for The Vessel.
XR consultancyVendor independent advice, AR direction and hands on delivery.
AR platformThe software the augmented reality layer was built and published in.
The Vessel is a whisky decanter built as an object of storytelling, designed by Graphic Brands as a tribute to the fantasy tabletop role playing community. Every surface carries part of the narrative. A digital layer carries the rest, and that is the part we were brought in to shape.
Working with Warren & Georgie at Vertical Realities was one of the defining creative partnerships behind The Vessel project. From the outset they brought a level of technical ambition and strategic thinking that pushed the project far beyond what we'd imagined. The AR experience they built isn't an add-on to the physical object, it's an integral part of the storytelling system. They took my creative vision and found ways to make it real, interactive and genuinely immersive. Without their expertise and commitment, The Vessel would be a singular beautiful bottle. With Vertical Realities help, it's now a world.
We are a vendor independent XR consultancy, so most of our conversations start with a question rather than a product. Here the question was a good one. How do you take the story of a physical object and carry it into the space around it, without the whole thing turning into a technology project?
Our answer was TRACE3D. We put the idea to Graphic Brands early, showed the team what it could do in practice, and then stayed with the project as the concept developed.
What The Vessel is
Graphic Brands was selected as one of twelve design agencies worldwide, and one of only three in the UK, to take part in Make a Mark, the packaging innovation project led by ESTAL, Avery Dennison and LEONHARD KURZ. The brief was an invitation to push past conventional packaging. After almost a year in development, The Vessel is the answer the team arrived at.
It is a concept piece rather than a product on sale, and it was designed to be kept and refilled long after the whisky is gone. The detail runs deep:
- A twenty sided glass body, a direct nod to the D20 dice used in games such as Dungeons and Dragons
- Aged metallic finishes in oxidised steel and brushed brass, with ash wood accents carrying Beaux Arts inspired engravings
- A clockwork inspired rotating closure with a coin lock system and embossed insignia
- A wooden base housing colour changing LEDs that tint the liquid
- A foil embossed neck label with cryptographic detailing, plus engraved ciphers and runes across the design
- NFC in the capsule top, and hidden barcodes that trigger augmented reality content
The finished piece was shown at LUXE PACK Monaco in 2025, at the Grimaldi Forum, as part of the Make a Mark presence.
Why we suggested TRACE3D
TRACE3D is a platform for building augmented reality experiences without writing code, made by Trace 3D Inc, a team with roots at Magic Leap. Three things made it the right recommendation for a design team rather than a development team.
Scenes are assembled in a mobile creator app or a browser based studio. Content is placed, drawn and annotated directly in the space where it will be seen, so the people who own the design own the AR too.
Experiences can be pinned to a GPS location or to an image marker. On The Vessel, that is what makes hidden barcodes on the pack able to trigger a layer of story that sits in the room with you.
Audiences view experiences on iOS and Android, with a headset viewer for Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest available as early access. It also works with GLB, the common 3D format for AR, so existing product renders go straight into a scene at true scale.
Why seeing it at full scale matters
Renders and flat visuals tell you a great deal, but they cannot tell you how an object feels at arm's length. Research into design review in architecture and construction makes a consistent point: putting people in front of a design at real scale improves the quality of the decisions they make, because scale, form and material all read differently in the room than they do on a screen.
For a piece like The Vessel, designed to be picked up, turned and read, that is not a detail. It is the whole experience.
Where we came in
We were involved from inception, contributing ideas as the concept took shape: working through how the digital layer would sit alongside the print, foiling and finishing, and keeping the augmented reality in service of the design rather than bolted onto it. That is the part of consultancy that rarely makes it into a case study. Choosing the right tool is quick. Working out what a design team actually needs it to do, and what it should not do, takes longer and matters more.
The official Make a Mark listing for The Vessel credits Vertical Realities and Trace3D under AR Development Partners, alongside Reflex Label+ and Proof+ for print, Estal for the custom glass, Avery Dennison for label material, KURZ for transfer foil and Tapi for the custom stopper.
A fuller use case, with more detail on how the AR layer was built, is on the way. In the meantime, congratulations to the Graphic Brands team. It is a piece of work worth shouting about.
How we support projects like this
Vendor independent advice on the right approach, outcome mapping so success is defined before anything is built, staging and deployment, training and adoption for your teams, and ongoing support once you are live.
Got an idea that needs a digital layer?
Tell us what you are trying to do and we will tell you honestly whether XR is the right answer. No obligation, just straight advice.
