Highland Park’s latest whisky collaboration starts with an unusual design brief: What does a flavor look like?
For the second edition of its Between You and I series, the Orkney distillery partnered with New York-based artist and creative director Laila Gohar on a 17-year-old single malt and a visual identity shaped by the memories and imagined places it conjured for her.
Photography courtesy of Highland Park
Highland Park Master Whisky Maker Marc Watson sampled more than 80 casks while developing the release, taking inspiration from Gohar’s Egyptian heritage. The resulting whisky spent its first 11 years in refill casks before moving into unseasoned American oak, selected to amplify notes of orange blossom, leather, and warming spice alongside the distillery’s characteristic peat smoke.
Photography courtesy of Highland Park
But it’s Gohar’s response to those flavors that gives the collaboration its visual character. Leather brought to mind ancient artifacts in a Cairo museum; orange blossom suggested a sun-drenched Andalusian courtyard; and vanilla transported her to the slopes of a tropical volcano beneath a night sky. Those scenes became the basis for the packaging co-created with Gohar, pairing hand-drawn illustrations by Silja Goetz with layered references to the imagined worlds.
Photography courtesy of Highland Park
“My work is all about reimagining objects, ingredients, flavors, creating something familiar but totally unexpected to spark curiosity and conversation,” Gohar says. “That’s why this collaboration felt so natural.”
The concept extends inside the box, where traditional tasting notes have been replaced by a booklet of vignettes written by Gohar, encouraging drinkers to approach the whisky through association and imagination rather than flavor descriptors alone.
Photography courtesy of Highland Park
Between You and I by Laila Gohar for Highland Park is available globally for $160.
Editorial Transparency: This article was developed with the assistance of AI tools, which may have been used for research, outlining, editing, or copy refinement. Reporting, fact-checking, and editorial decisions were made by the Design Milk editorial team.
