Promoting the world's best loved drinks

Diageo, the world’s largest distributor of spirits and home to some of the world’s best loved drinks brands, wanted to promote the different characters in the company’s portfolio by creating custom office furniture in a series of meeting spaces inspired by each brand.

Working with the client team and Stanhope, we designed tables and custom office furniture within meeting spaces in the corporate offices that drew from a palette of materials including glass, timber and steel to create truly personable spaces for group and independent working. The starting off point for each space in the corporate offices was the different aesthetic qualities of each drinks brand. From gin to whiskey, each presented a unique palette of materials, colours and tones from which to draw inspiration for the custom office furniture.

For the whiskey brands Oban and Lagavulin, we designed a boardroom table whose standout feature in the corporate offices was its beautiful maple grain pattern. The caramel tone of the wood and the rich, red upholstery of the surrounding tub chairs echo the dark, sweet tones of the whiskey.

For the Smirnoff meeting room we created a more contemporary suite of furniture that featured a more neutral aesthetic. White laminate and cool steel were used to create a meeting room table with a slimline Curzon base bring more corporate office in look and feel..

For the Gordon’s Gin meeting table, we used layered etching to achieve the dappled ice effect to conjure thoughts of a freshly made gin and tonic, which in turn was a refreshing take on what could otherwise have been more staid corporate offices.

Working with the client we designed some of our boardroom tables in the corporate offices to be reconfigurable for tele-conferencing. A number of tables could be opened out to allow each user to be seen on screen in a staggered formation.

In other areas of the Diageo corporate offices we diversified the materials palette to use different timbers with varying tones and warmth. Waterfall edges gave the boardroom tables a softer finish and discreet cable flaps concealed integrated audio-visual functionality and power supplies.