Jeremy Lindley, Global Design Director at Diageo talks to us about the story, inspiration and innovation behind their Platinum winning work, Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ultra. Get to know a bit more about him and the Diageo design team below...

Can you tell us a bit about your team at Diageo - who you are, where you’re based, what brands you work with?

The Diageo Global Design Team works closely with Brand Teams and Innovation to deliver design excellence. We are based in the same office as the teams with whom we work: London, New York, Dublin, Amsterdam and Bangalore. We work across the full Diageo portfolio; our main focus is on our Global Brands and the largest Regional Brands: Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, Baileys, Guinness, Tanqueray, Captain Morgan, Don Julio, McDowell’s no.1, Singleton, Talisker, Crown Royal, Bulleit.

At Diageo, our brands are built on strong foundations - what I call brand truths. Distinctiveness is the number one thing we strive for across all our work, because it’s what makes a brand instantly recognisable and emotionally resonant. These truths aren’t invented; they’re uncovered by really getting under the skin of a brand’s history, craft and culture.

How would you describe your core area of expertise, and how has it evolved over time?

Our core expertise is delivering creative excellence and brand recognition, while being creative with new designs. . Initially, we worked mainly on pack design, but over time the team has expanded its role to include the visual systems for our portfolio (Brand Worlds), Brand Experience, retail and bar executions. At Diageo, our job is to make sure that when someone sees a Guinness pint, a Johnnie Walker bottle, or a Baileys serve, they instantly recognise the brand behind it. Creative consistency is how we preserve our icons, adapt to the times, and keep our brands as distinctive tomorrow as they are today.

Our philosophy in three takeaways:

1. Let your consumers lead you: design should only ever be driven by consumer insight, not internal whims.

2. Commit to your icons: protect the codes that drive salience.

3. Use them to experiment in unexpected ways: creativity thrives within defined constraints.

You have won the 2025 Pentawards Beverage Platinum Award. How does it feel to receive such recognition?

We were so thrilled to be awarded the 2025 Pentawards Beverage Platinum Award for Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ultra, the world’s lightest 70cl glass whisky bottle, to the best of our knowledge. The recognition of our work to reduce weight, and therefore carbon, of our bottles has helped us publicize how we have given open access to our patent, teaching designers how to harness the carbon-saving potential of our design breakthrough.

Tell us about your Platinum winning project Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ultra the story behind it, inspiration, challenges,…

Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ultra, believed to be the world’s lightest 70cl glass whisky bottle, launched at London Design Festival in September 2024 and went on sale in March 2025.

At 180g without the closure, and the result of five years of R&D, it is a boundary-pushing, first-of-its-kind innovation that strides towards the future of luxury. It was crafted to achieve exquisite beauty and delicacy, showing what is possible with glass. The learnings have been applied to our portfolio, the largest ever redesign of our products, reducing glass weight and carbon. For every gram of glass removed, we save over half a gram of carbon in production.

In our quest to create the lightest possible Johnnie Walker Blue Label bottle, we adopted a test-and-learn model. The only limitation we set ourselves was that the bottle must be strong enough for consumers. Every other aspect of production and distribution could be re-thought.

What part of the project did you enjoy working on the most?

I have most enjoyed the opportunity to push the boundaries of what is possible with glass, to re-think every aspect of design, production, filling and transportation. I have loved partnering with the glass makers at Sisecam, learning from the experience of both hand-blown glass experts and their mass-production engineers. A close partnership between designer and manufacturer is critical to every project, especially an innovation as challenging as Ultra was to bring to market. At Diageo, design is never done in isolation. We work in a deeply collaborative culture where ideas are developed with global brand teams, markets, and creative partners to ensure our ideas resonate and work across cultures and contexts.

What would you say to a brand or agency thinking of entering the Pentawards for the first time?

Pentawards is a fantastic design award to enter, and very inclusive in the wide scope of countries, brands and projects that are entered. Benchmarking yourself against the very best creatives in the world will only benefit your design team.

It’s the Pentawards 20th Anniversary this year, do you have a stand-out moment of design or standout design project that’s stuck with you from the past 20 years?

In addition to the joy of receiving the 2025 Pentawards Beverage Platinum Award, I have had the great privilege of receiving the Pentawards Founders Prize on behalf of Johnnie Walker in 2015. Johnnie Walker has always been deeply rooted in the principles of progress and innovation. These aren't just buzzwords for us - they've been our guiding light ever since John Walker himself founded the brand over 200 years ago. Benchmarking ourselves against the very best creatives in the world helps us stay sharp and truly understand if we are hitting our goals.

Can you tell us what you are currently working on? Anything exciting that you can share with us?

We are working on a wide range of exciting Innovation, Sustainability and Brand Renovation projects. Unfortunately these are confidential so I can’t share the details until they are launched. What I can share is that I’m incredibly proud of a recently launched project, the work that Kathryn Wilson from my team has led for the newly opened Guinness Old Brewers Yard in London’s Covent Garden. A major new £73 million visitor attraction and working microbrewery that reintroduces brewing to this site — which last produced beer over 300 years ago — and celebrates Guinness with a London twist.

How do you manage to stay creative and find inspiration?

Like most designers I’m incredibly curious, so I soak up inspiration from multiple and sometimes strange sources! My team constantly inspires me, they are the most remarkable group of daring creatives with boundless energy and enthusiasm. I do find industry events, conferences and awards a great source of inspiration too. Pentawards provides a great source of ideas, contacts and inspiration. Nothing beats seeing work by fellow creatives and thinking “I wish I’d done that!”

To you, what is the power of design?

At Diageo, design is about protecting the timeless truths that make our brands distinctive, while evolving them with fresh purpose. By committing to iconic brand heritages, while updating them in fresh, unexpected ways, we create consistency that builds memory, salience, and lasting cultural relevance.

You can see more of Diageo's projects here . And connect with Jeremy on LinkedIn here.

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