Award Winning Australian Gin: What Inspired L16?
This week, L16° was awarded Gold in the World Brand Design Society Awards for our gin branding — and I’ve been sitting with that news in the best way.
Not because it’s our first award, but because it takes me straight back to the beginning. Before there was a bottle, a label, or even a name, there was a moment that stayed with me — a feeling I couldn’t quite articulate.
I was on a secluded coral cay on the Great Barrier Reef – hidden along the 16th latitude. The kind of place where everything goes quiet. The water was impossibly clear, and the sunlight didn’t just reflect on the surface — it moved through it. You could literally watch light glide across the shallows like it had its own rhythm.
I didn’t leave thinking, “This would make a great label.” I left thinking, “I want to bottle that.” Calm. Clarity. Colour. Stillness. That was the creative anchor for L16°, and it still is.
If you’ve found your way here searching for an award winning Australian gin, I hope this gives you a sense of what we’ve been building — not just a spirit, but a transportive experience.
The quiet moment that became L16°
L16° wasn’t born from wanting to create something loud. I wanted something restrained — confident without raising its voice. A gin with an immediate sense of place, but expressed through feeling rather than scenery.
That reef moment was never about a “coastal scene.” It was about what the environment does to you when you’re standing in it: the way colour softens, the way light dances, the way time slows down and even seems to stand still.
Designing with light, not illustration
From the start, I knew I didn’t want the packaging to be literal. No postcard beaches. No obvious coastal artwork. Instead, we focused on the optical qualities of that place — the way shallow reef water behaves — and let light and purity become the main storytelling elements.
That decision shaped everything. The finishes, the textures, the materials, the glass. Every element had to work together, so the design felt unified — not like a collection of decorative parts.
Colour, texture, and the details you feel
One of the things I love most about this pack is that it rewards attention. If you hold the bottle and turn it slightly, you’ll notice the surface shift and reveal subtle depth — a gentle movement, like sunlight refracting across clear aqua shallows. The way it feels in your hand has weight and warmth. It feels good to hold and to pour from.
Colour was handled with care. The subtle green is the emotional centre — that feeling of looking into reef water and seeing forever — but it’s balanced by softer, sand-toned warmth so the whole palette stays fresh, modern, and restrained.
Even the “quiet” choices matter to me: the natural warmth of the closure, the softer wash on the neck label, the way the label finishes interact with highlights. Nothing is there to shout. Everything is there to hold the memory.
The bottle: a tactile marker of place
The bottle itself was always going to be part of the story, not just a container. The pale aqua glass immediately recalls reef shallows, and the sculpted form catches and distorts light with gentle curves — soft, fluid, calm.
There are also small tactile details that ground L16° in origin — subtle cues that connect back to place without over-explaining. Those details feel personal to me, because they’re not marketing. They’re memory.
What our Gold win means to me
This Gold recognition means a lot — but not because it “validates” the idea in a big public way. It means the intention has been successfully translated.
That a quiet, sensory moment — sunlight moving through shallow reef water — could become something physical you can pick up, turn in your hands, and feel.
L16° was never meant to be loud. It was meant to be transporting. And if this award encourages even a few people to slow down, look closer, and experience the design the way it was designed to be experienced along with the beautiful organic gin that I have crafted with equal care — then it’s done what it was always meant to do.
Bec Jones
— Founder & Distiller
Looking for an award winning Australian gin? If you’d like to learn more about L16° or enquire about stockists and trade, get in touch via our website.
