ATIU Voices N°01 — Nude Brand Creation

Five questions. Four fashion editions. One brief that “couldn’t be done”.

With Voices, we hand the microphone to the design agencies we work with — the people who arrive with ideas that don’t fit the standard processes, and push us to find a way anyway.

There was no doubt about who should open the series. Nude Brand Creation is a strategic brand and packaging design agency based in London, working across drinks, luxury and beauty. Over the past years we have worked together on some of the most ambitious decoration projects to leave our plants — from four editions of Royal Salute’s Fashion Collection, two with Harris Reed and two with Richard Quinn, to the two Malfy × Missoni limited editions, Originale and Rosa — all for Pernod Ricard. It is no coincidence that these collaborations live on sublimation: the technology is widely used in fashion itself, which makes it the natural bridge for designers and fashion houses who want to carry their patterns from fabric onto glass. We asked Amy Dickinson, Assistant Creative Director at Nude, our five questions.

Who are you and what do you do?

“I’m Amy Dickinson, Assistant Creative Director at Nude. We’re a strategic brand and packaging design agency, mainly working across drinks, luxury and beauty. In simple terms, we elevate brands and make them feel more desirable.

We work pretty closely with our clients, more like long-term partners than just a project team, shaping everything from the strategy through to the final design. The aim is always the same: create something distinctive that actually drives value over time.”

Why does packaging matter in your industry?

“Because in a lot of cases, it is the most important touchpoint for the brand. Especially in drinks, the bottle is often the first, and sometimes only, interaction someone has. It’s what people see on shelf, pick up, pour from, keep in their home.

So it’s doing a lot of jobs at once. It needs to tell the story, signal quality, feel right in the hand, and stand out in a crowded space.

At the same time, there’s growing pressure around sustainability, so every decision (materials, finishes, production) needs to be thought through properly. It’s a balance between doing the right thing environmentally and still creating something people really want.”

What did you ask for that “couldn’t be done”?

“We were asked to create a fully decorated whisky bottle for Royal Salute, which sounds straightforward, but really wasn’t.

The bottle itself is quite complex in shape, with lots of curves and transitions, which makes applying graphics consistently really difficult. On top of that, the idea was to work with fashion designers, so the designs were bold, detailed and full of colour — not something simple you could just “wrap” onto the bottle.

Normally you’d solve this with a sleeve, but that wouldn’t work here, both because of the shape and because it’s not great from a recyclability point of view.

So we worked with ATIU’s sublimation process instead, which allowed us to apply the designs directly onto the glass. That meant we could fully wrap the bottle in these detailed artworks, without compromising on sustainability.”

What changed after it was done?

“Everything!

It opened up a completely new way of thinking about what’s possible on glass, not just for Royal Salute but more broadly. What started as a one-off became a full series of limited editions.

It also pushed the idea of creative collaborations further, showing you can bring in bold, fashion-led design and still execute it properly at a production level.

In short, it raised the bar, both creatively and technically.”

One piece of advice for someone designing a bottle?

“Don’t just think about how it looks — think about how it lives.

A good bottle isn’t just something you buy once and forget. It sits in people’s homes, gets picked up, poured, noticed. So it needs to feel right in the hand and look great from a distance.

The details really matter. Those are the things people subconsciously read as quality.

And everything should feel joined up. The shape, the graphics, the closure — all working together.

If you get it right, it becomes more than packaging. It becomes something people actually want to keep.”

In this edition

Nude Brand Creation, London — in the words of Amy Dickinson, Assistant Creative Director. The projects: Royal Salute 21 Year Old, The Fashion Collection — four limited editions, two with Harris Reed and two with Richard Quinn — and the two Malfy × Missoni limited editions, Originale and Rosa, for Pernod Ricard. The technique: digital sublimation, full-body artwork applied directly onto the glass, with no sleeve and no compromise on recyclability. All images courtesy of Nude Brand Creation.