NAVYA ADIPUDI
SUYO Pisco
Designing a story-driven, minimalist digital experience for a premium spirit brand
SUYO Pisco is a Peruvian spirit brand founded by two entrepreneurs with a clear mission—to celebrate connection, craftsmanship, and culture through their small-batch pisco. They approached Zeitler Design to reimagine their website as a digital reflection of their story—not just about drinking, but about moments of meaning and shared experience.
The goal was to create an immersive yet minimal website that felt refined, approachable, and timeless—balancing visual storytelling with seamless usability for retail partners, industry professionals, and discerning consumers.
Role
Sole UX/UI Designer
Research participation, interaction design, prototyping, design system, and QA with devs. Collaborated with a Design Lead and a Senior Visual Designer on early visuals.
Team
Design Lead
UX/UI Designer (Me)
Senior Graphic Designer
Development Team (I managed QA and handoff).
Timeline
March 2025 – August 2025
The Challenge:
SUYO PISCO’s original website shared the brand story but lacked the immersive experience that could fully communicate its craft, culture, and personality. The founders wanted a site that could evoke the feeling of sharing pisco—rooted in connection and memory—without relying on traditional liquor marketing tropes.
The challenge was to balance emotion and clarity: to tell a story that felt deeply authentic while keeping the design elegant, minimal, and scalable for future updates.
Understanding the Audience
SUYO PISCO’s audience spans both industry professionals and discerning consumers—people who care about quality, narrative, and authenticity. These include boutique liquor retailers, bar and restaurant owners, mixologists, and collectors who value craft and origin stories.
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User Goals
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Find SUYO easily, through clear store and bar locators.
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Understand the brand’s story, learning about its founders, origins, and production process.
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Engage with the brand, through contact, press, or partnership opportunities.
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Learn how to enjoy pisco, with recipes and serving inspiration that create connection.
Pain Points:
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Existing liquor brands often felt commercial or inauthentic, lacking emotional depth.
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Competing sites overloaded users with visual noise or confusing navigation.
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SUYO’s story needed to feel personal, timeless, and intentional, not trendy or pretentious.
Competitive Analysis:
Most pisco and mezcal brands rely on earthy, highly textured aesthetics. We explored reference brands like Madre Mezcal, Yola Mezcal, and Ten to One Rum, each known for strong visual storytelling and authentic identity.
While SUYO shares their values of craft and community, its visual system required more restraint—a clean, grounded design with selective use of texture, high-end experience-driven photography, and expressive typography. This positioned SUYO between heritage and modernity, appealing to both traditional spirit lovers and contemporary tastemakers.
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Takeaways
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Less is more: Minimalist layouts emphasized product and story equally.
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Lead with feeling: Connection, not consumption, became the design’s emotional anchor.
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Design for scalability: Clean structure allowed flexibility for future content growth.
The Problem
Your customers need a high-quality, unique spirit that offers authenticity, a compelling story, and a memorable drinking experience but struggle to find brands that balance craft, consistency, and scalability.
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The site needed to:
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Reflect SUYO’s mission of connection through craft.
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Build credibility with retailers, mixologists, and new customers.
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Use imagery, motion, and storytelling to immerse users in the brand.
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Create a smooth, elegant flow from discovery to engagement.
The Solution
The final design merges storytelling and simplicity. Rich imagery, sticky scroll animations, and layered layouts draw users into SUYO’s world without overwhelming them. Each section transitions naturally into the next, mirroring the slow, intentional experience of sharing pisco.
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The palette, typography, and composition communicate quiet confidence. Text is brief but evocative—written to inform without breaking the immersive tone. Interactions are subtle and deliberate, allowing the visuals and product to take center stage.
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As development progressed, the design evolved further toward minimalism—refined layouts, lighter typography, and simplified color application. These adjustments helped align brand identity with scalability, speed, and long-term maintainability.
Design Ideation:
The original concept emphasized earthy textures and expressive patterns inspired by Peruvian landscapes and craft traditions. Over time, the design direction shifted toward restraint, prioritizing composition and storytelling over surface embellishment.
Key Design Elements
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Sticky scrolls and anchored visuals to follow narrative flow and maintain immersion.
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Moody imagery and intentional motion to convey emotion without distraction.
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Generous white space to enhance focus and reflect a sense of quiet luxury.
The final look embodies SUYO’s dual identity: authentic and grounded, yet sophisticated and modern.
HiFi Prototype:
I prototyped all key pages in Figma, building out structure and motion interactions to create a fully navigable demo for the client. This prototype helped communicate SUYO’s story through interactive moments—scroll effects, transitions, and visual storytelling.
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Because the brand’s ethos centers on connection, we designed the experience to flow seamlessly, guiding users through story, product, and availability in a natural rhythm.
QA Process & Revision:
The QA process proved extensive. Late-stage design changes—many reintroducing ideas discussed earlier in design—led to multiple development revisions. This required us to rebalance expectations and boundaries between design and dev phases.
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In the end, we streamlined code and design components, ensuring that the site performed smoothly while maintaining the intended aesthetic. The experience underscored the importance of locking design decisions before development to protect quality and timeline integrity.
The Results:
The Results
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Complete redesign emphasizing authenticity, clarity, and experience.
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Storytelling-centered layout with intuitive flows for discovery and engagement.
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Refined minimalism that reflects the brand’s premium, grounded identity.
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Lessons implemented in future Zeitler projects to strengthen design/dev collaboration.
Reflection
SUYO PISCO was a lesson in balance—between authenticity and restraint, storytelling and usability. It reinforced the value of design clarity and communication discipline throughout complex builds.
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The project also deepened my understanding of how subtle UX details—like pacing, rhythm, and white space—can convey emotion just as powerfully as visuals. Despite its challenges, it was incredibly rewarding to see the brand evolve into something more focused, sophisticated, and true to its vision.
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It’s a project I look back on as a milestone in refining not just aesthetic judgment, but also the process of guiding clients through evolving creative direction with clarity and empathy.