Jack Daniel’s x McLaren Halo MK1 Presentation Case Wins AmeriStar Award

# What won the award Hunter Luxury's Halo MK1 presentation case for the Jack Daniel's x McLaren collaboration received the AmeriStar Award for Design Excellence. The AmeriStar Awards are run by the Institute of Packaging Professionals and recognize packaging across multiple categories. Judges singled out the case's distinct wishbone structure, a direct reference to Formula 1's Halo device.

# How the Halo became a case Brown-Forman's Global Design team studied McLaren's visual and engineering language — nose cone, rear wing, centre-lock wheels — and settled on the Halo as the structural idea that could also read as sculpture. The unit was unveiled at the Miami Grand Prix and houses a bottle of Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey bottled at 58.7% ABV. That ABV was chosen to pay tribute to Bruce McLaren's first race car, an Austin 7 numbered 58.

# Materials and manufacture

# Mechanism and user interaction

Paul Hamilton, head of sales and marketing at Hunter Luxury, described the award as "a major endorsement of what Halo MK1 represents: the ability of packaging to carry a brand story through structure, movement, material, and detail." He called the project "a genuinely collaborative achievement" and framed the challenge as converting the shared vision into a manufacturable object with the presence of a trophy and the precision of automotive engineering.

Sam Gardner, senior art director at Brown-Forman Global Design, said there was a point when the case "stopped feeling like a case or a gift pack and started to feel like a piece of sculpture." That shift guided the design toward a high-touch display object rather than conventional retail packaging.

# Why it matters to collectors and brand teams

# What's confirmed

• Award: AmeriStar Award for Design Excellence (Institute of Packaging Professionals).
• Creators: Hunter Luxury in collaboration with Brown-Forman and McLaren.
• Reveal: Launched at the Miami Grand Prix.
• Bottle ABV: 58.7%, chosen as a tribute to Bruce McLaren's first car number.
• Manufacturing: Over 20 CAD iterations, FDM/SLA/DMLS prototypes, more than 50 components, eight materials, eight manufacturing processes.

# Bottom line The Halo MK1 presentation case won recognition because it translated a single automotive safety element into a coherent structural concept, then executed that concept through intensive design engineering and diverse manufacturing techniques to produce a sculpture-like packaging object suitable for a limited-edition whiskey release.