How Graphic Brands made The Vessel, a whiskey bottle for D&D fanatics whose story carries on in augmented reality, built with Vertical Realities on Trace.
For brands and agencies, creating packaging that captures their users' attention and imagination is the ultimate goal.
Graphic Brands set out to do just this for Make a Mark at Luxe Pack Monaco. Their mission was to make a decanter that tells a story, rewards people who look deeply, and creates interactions that keep the community returning back week after week and month after month.
Through their expertise in creative direction, branding, and physical design, they created The Vessel, a whiskey bottle for tabletop RPG fanatics. Scan it and a story emerges all around the user in augmented reality. The bottle reveals cracks in the ground, a haunted world all around you, and an experience that is unforgettable.
Fans are collectors. They engage, they argue over details, they decode mysteries, and they engage in the lore of a subject for years. By tying packaging and branding to a dedicated fan base, brands can link that excitement to their own products.
Graphic Brands wanted to create a collector's item that could capture the imagination of role-playing fans and serve as the perfect artifact during any campaign. The agency also saw The Vessel as a key way to bring players together to build a lasting relationship with their brand and clients. Their own line for the project, "Aged in Myth. Bottled for Legend," captures the essence of the experience.
Graphic Brands was one of only 12 agencies picked worldwide for Make a Mark, and only one of three from the United Kingdom. To create the perfect prototype, they dedicated almost a year to designing bespoke packaging, glass prototypes, and crafting an intricate narrative to bring to life.
The glass body of the whiskey decanter has 20 sides. It evokes the D20 die that every Dungeons & Dragons player knows. It is wrapped in embossed latticework. It holds a clockwork-inspired top that turns and locks with a coin and, in the correct sequence, reveals hidden meanings and markings to its users. An LED base tints the whiskey to add an aura and a medieval glow to its contents. The foil neck label hides ciphers, runes, and codes that lead to immersive worlds and real scavenger hunts.
Hidden in with the precise glass work, base and labels are QR codes and NFC tags to launch the immersive experience in AR.
As people unearth the code, the digital content anchors to the real bottle. A tree stump emerges from beneath it, cracks open, and drops into a burning, seething underworld. Cryptic messages appear on tattered papers. Shadows move around you, and the scene ends with a verdict: You have been possessed by The Vessel.
As Terry Cole, Graphic Brands' creative director, put it, "The AR experience they built isn't an add-on to the physical object, it's an integral part of the storytelling system."
The Vessel was a collaboration with experts from brand marketing and XR. Graphic Brands led the concept design and packaging. Vertical Realities, a London-based XR consultancy, joined at the concept stage and directed the AR experience. Trace is the platform that the whole story is built upon.
Graphic Brands started with renderings as PNG images and 3D models as GLB files. They were able to leverage the Trace Studio and Trace Creator app to test and prototype the immersive experience, along with the physical bottle. Even though they weren't experts in AR, they were able to use Trace's simple tools with their existing materials.
Once the experiences were completed, viewers at Luxe Pack Monaco were able to experience The Vessel through the Trace Viewer app and on AR headsets like the Meta Quest and Apple Vision Pro.
AR packaging transforms a product from something that people look at to something that they can engage deeply with.
19 Crimes, a wine maker, brought many of their labels to life in AR. Since 2017 their Living Wine Labels app has passed 5.5 million downloads, and the brand's case volume grew 40%, according to a PTC case study.
The Vessel takes this even further by creating an experience whose story continues even after purchase. In 2026, Graphic Brands opened a Discord server where the lore continues to unfold month by month with decoded ciphers, augmented reality reveals, live Q&As, and fan work.
Check out The Vessel's augmented reality experience for yourself.
And learn more about the world of The Vessel on Graphic Brands' website.
Kick off your own AR experiences using Trace Studio and the Trace Creator app.
