Bruichladdich Distillery · Interactive 3D provenance mapping · Ecommerce integration
Designing and building interactive 3D terrain maps for Bruichladdich’s barley provenance releases, embedding real farm locations as annotated hotspots directly into product detail pages across the distillery’s ecommerce site.
Islay Barley Farm Map
01 / The Brief
No external brief existed. The maps were a self-initiated evolution from a 2D design convention – static flat maps had been used to illustrate the farm names and positions behind Bruichladdich’s barley provenance releases. The problem with that approach was legibility and engagement: a flat map communicates geography but loses any sense of the landscape itself.
The question was whether a 3D, interactive equivalent could do more work on a product page without adding meaningful load time or technical overhead.
Farm-level detail, Islay barley provenance map
02 / The Work
Each map was built as an interactive 3D asset hosted on Sketchfab and embedded directly into product detail pages. Dynamic annotation hotspots identified specific barley farms by name and location, tied to the provenance story of that particular release.
The maps were not decorative. Each version was configured individually for a specific release, with a distinct set of farms displayed – making each embed a functional piece of product information rather than a reused visual.
At the time of writing, four release iterations were supported across twelve live PDPs.
03 / The Technical Approach
The core challenge was fidelity versus file size. A high-resolution photographic or rendered landscape at sufficient quality would be prohibitively heavy for a PDP embed. The solution used a four-step pipeline in Cinema 4D:
Each finished asset came in at approximately 1MB – well within the threshold for a performant embedded experience. This approach meant the visual quality of actual terrain was retained while keeping the asset suitable for a commercial ecommerce environment.
Islay Barley Farms
Organic Barley Farm & Bairds Maltings
Bere Barley Farms – Orkney islands
04 / Outcome
The maps shipped on product detail pages tied to Bruichladdich’s barley provenance releases. Because those releases are limited edition, the PDPs were retired once stock cleared – the assets are no longer live. That lifecycle was expected; the maps were designed for specific releases, not as permanent site furniture.
The more telling signal came from outside the ecommerce environment. Brand ambassadors representing Bruichladdich in international markets began incorporating the Sketchfab embeds into trade presentations – without being asked to. That lateral adoption, from teams working independently across different markets, suggested the maps were communicating something that existing materials weren’t.
05 / What This Connects To
The provenance maps sit in a longer thread running through my work at the distillery: the question of how digital tools can communicate craft and origin in ways that static design cannot.
That same question is at the centre of the Bruichladdich 3D Bottle Viewer, which used Sketchfab for a different purpose, product presentation rather than geographic storytelling, and it carries forward into The Macklowe, where a 3D product experience became the primary vehicle for communicating material and craft at an ultra-premium level.
Global travel retail Giftpack
A duty-free giftpack for The Botanist, centred on a planter for kitchen herbs.