Erhan Özden designed the packaging for Kamiki Whisky, a spirit that takes inspiration from Japanese tradition.
“Kamiki’s story takes place in a truly ancient land—one of spiritual and carnal harmony—in the temples of Nara in Japan.”
“The ancient capital of Japan’s Nara Prefecture, Nara holds many temples from the 8th century that imperturbably give the holy capital its power. Ōmiwa Shrine in Nara is one of Japan’s oldest extant Shinto shrines. It is a tutelary shrine of the Japanese alcohol producers. Most well-known alcohol producer families are in Nara and these families have a centuries-old tradition of producing alcohol for Ōmiwa.”
The alcohol produced by these families is served as blessings at Shinto temples. One of the families that produce alcohol for Kamiki is one of the last Samurai families. Because of this our Logotype has a Samurai’s ‘Katana’ sword. The sword looks like a cut-out of our logotype like KA-MI-KI. Our name was Inspired by beautiful breezes coming from the ‘Mountain of the God’, so we named our whisky KAMIKI whereby ‘KAMI’ means ‘GOD’ and ‘IKI’ means ‘BREATH’. Swords cut the logotype and because of this our logotype is not in a horizontal or vertical form. This is the first logotype usage in the whisky category.”
Designer: Erhan Özden
Photographer: Bengü Akman Aynur
Client: YOSHINO SPIRITS
Brand: Kamiki Whisky
Location: Nara, Japan
