The Black Pearl Distillery: how we built a brand-first website from scratch
A small-batch rum distillery at Albert Dock needed more than a website. They needed a brand that could hold its own in a crowded market. Here is how we built it.
The Black Pearl Distillery is a small-batch rum distillery based at Albert Dock in Liverpool. When they came to us, they had a product, a location, and a story. What they did not have was a brand or a website.
This is one of our favourite types of project: starting from nothing with a genuinely interesting business that deserves to look the part.
The brief
The brief was clear in some areas and open in others. Clear: the site needed to reflect the character of the product and the location. Albert Dock is one of Liverpool's most distinctive addresses. A generic website was not going to work. Open: beyond that, we had creative freedom on direction.
The first thing we told them was that the website could not come before the brand. You cannot design a site without knowing what you are designing into. Typefaces, colours, tone of voice, how the brand feels when you encounter it. Those decisions shape every other decision downstream.
Building the brand first
We built the full brand identity before writing a single line of code. A dark, rich colour palette anchored in deep navy and black with gold and amber accents. Typography that felt handcrafted without being fussy. A tone of voice that was direct and confident, with a dry wit that suited the product.
The name and the visual identity needed to feel like they belonged in the same world. The Black Pearl already had the nautical, slightly dangerous quality we wanted to push into. We leaned into it without going anywhere near cliche.
The build
Five sections across a single long-scroll page, plus a standalone contact route. We used Next.js for the front end with a Sanity CMS configured for the content the client needed to manage: product descriptions, stockist information, and event announcements.
The site needed to work on mobile first. A significant portion of their audience was going to encounter it on a phone at the dock or after finding them on Instagram. Every section was built mobile-first and tested on real devices before being expanded for desktop.
Performance was non-negotiable. A slow site in a hospitality context is a credibility problem. The Black Pearl site loads in under a second on a standard mobile connection. Images are optimised, fonts are loaded efficiently, and there is nothing on the page that does not need to be there.
What the brand-first approach changed
Projects where we build the brand before the site consistently produce better outcomes than projects where the site comes first and the brand gets applied on top. The reason is simple: when the brand is established, every design decision has a reference point. Does this feel right for the brand? Yes or no. Without that, every decision is a negotiation.
For The Black Pearl, it meant the site felt cohesive from the first build. There was no point where something looked wrong or out of place. The brand did the work.
The result
A complete brand identity and website delivered and live within six weeks of the initial brief. The client managed their own content from day one using Sanity. The Git repository and all credentials transferred to them on launch day. They own everything.
If you have a hospitality or food and drink business that needs a brand and a website built properly, get in touch. We know what that kind of project requires and we enjoy doing it.