During my years in the drinks industry, I worked on a substantial number of brand identities and the process always followed the same pattern. Give the designer a picture of the product, an understanding of the brand and a detailed description of the drinker – then let the graphic design gods decide your fate. The first concepts would be a mix of the good, the bad and the ugly – and what often followed was weeks of edits, agonising over the shape of a single letter and its proximity to its neighbour. 

Creating the Bennett Winch logo was refreshingly different. In the summer of 2014 we had brought Rupert Shreeve, a childhood friend and brilliant product designer, into the fold and tasked him with refining our early sketches of the Weekender. The results led to the product we sell today and we knew immediately that Rupert understood what we were about, so asked if he could get to work on our logo. 

A week before this, Bennett had been visiting his mother and updating her on our new venture, when she said, “You and Winch are both Robins, given that it’s a fairly rare name surely the logo should be a Robin?”. Bennett half-jokingly floated the idea to Ru who hit the sketch book that evening. 

Less than 24 hours later, Ru sent over his design and for the first time ever there was a unanimous yes – not only from the three of us, but from everyone we showed it to. The crossed robin birds to represent the ‘Bennett’ and the ‘Winch’ sides of the business had a bold, recognisable charm – and the spirit of a pirate-made flag. He’d also gone a step further and created a B.W. monogram which could be placed on every bag as a stamp of quality. 

We didn’t make a single amend and the logo and monogram have remained unchanged to this day. Given that creating timeless products is in our DNA, it’s reassuring that our logo seems to have the same longevity. What’s interesting is the number of times people we’ve been working with for years suddenly realise the connection. “Hold on. It’s just clicked why there are two robins in the logo!” I take no credit of course, this all goes to Ru, Mrs Bennett and the sheer luck of a shared first name. 

Credit for creation aside, I have to say there is a special feeling that comes with drilling something so personal into the stone of Savile Row and our logo is often a talking point when people visit the store. Conversations like this remind me that it’s nice to explain the backstory and shed a little light on how our brand came to be. 

Making your brand instantly recognisable through a logo isn’t easy, but I hope if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, the process goes as well for you as it did for us. And if you do happen to reach creative nirvana and nail a logo on the very first try, don’t tweak a thing – just let it fly!