Penguin Gin

Prop product label for a film adaptation of Tanith Lee’s The Book of the Mad from her collection, The Secret Books of Paradys, all set within alternative worlds of Paris. An ice labyrinth is at the heart of The Book of the Mad, connecting the three shifting cities of Paradys, Paradis, and Paradise, allowing some of the characters from each city to move between three dimensions/time periods.

For the faux campaign of Penguin Gin, I was inspired by ads for Absolut Vodka. My hope was to have this poster feel like a contemporary advertisement, with the caveat of an antique bottle and label. I attempted to evoke a sense of overlapping time/dimensions by subtly layering three perspectives of the iceberg scene.

I strayed a bit from Lee’s description of the label as “a weird landscape of ice and glaciers, and before them a black and white penguin with a marigold flash beside its beak.” Due to the nature of the teaser campaign, I sought to incorporate other clues from the novel, as the label would serve as a primary source of information for the film. Leocadia, an artist known for her paintings of people with the heads of animals (she was based upon Leonora Carrington), is one of the main characters who interacts with an aged bottle of Penguin Gin. In Paradise, Uncle Michelot is the inventor of the ice labyrinth; he also exists in Paradis and Paradys as Thomas the Warrior and Citalbo the Poet, respectively. The botanical illustrations are of juniper berries, the fundamental flavoring constituent of gin.

Iceberg photograph courtesy of Andy Brunner via Unsplash.