Independent and female-owned, High Pony is more than just a brand; it’s a school of thought, an unapologetically confident attitude.
With a mission to empower everyone to live an uncompromising life, High Pony is here to shake up drinking culture, offering a new way forward defined by ambition and choice.
Inspired by the founder’s background as a high-level tennis player and entrepreneur, the brand needed to balance performance and polish, discipline and glamour, energy and elegance. The packaging had to communicate quality, support product differentiation, and create immediate impact in a competitive category while capturing the confidence of a brand built for people who know what they like and call their own shots.
To bring this vision to life, Jacknife created a distinctive, ownable brand that felt less like a typical beverage product and more like a coveted lifestyle object.
The name “High Pony” was chosen with intention, symbolizing duality. It reflects elegance and refinement while nodding to the focused determination of tying your hair back before a match, a meeting, or a night out. The name evokes readiness, control, and uncompromising confidence.
The brand identity materialized through a meticulously crafted visual identity system that balanced boldness with elevated elegance. The frosted bottles, complemented by gold-embossed caps and textured labels, offered a tactile, premium look and physical quality. From packaging to photography, each detail was imbued with the energy of a brand people would want to show off, hold, and celebrate at gatherings.
A key challenge was designing for both alcoholic and non-alcoholic variants. Rather than treating them as separate products, we created a connected family with clear SKU differentiation. Shared structure, typography and metallic detailing unified the system, while bold colour and variant-specific cues helped consumers quickly navigate the full product range.
The High Pony icon became a central expression of the brand’s attitude, suggesting lift, movement and elevated energy. Paired with a confident typographic system and vibrant palette, the packaging captured the brand’s balance of sophistication and unapologetic personality.
The result gave High Pony a distinctive presence in the beverage category, engaging ambitious, style-conscious consumers with a system that felt premium, expressive and original. It brought the brand’s mission to life on the shelf, in hand, and across gatherings, offering a flexible cocktail experience built around taste, choice, and confidence.
Working with Jacknife was one of the best business decisions I have ever made. In my time launching brands, they were the best people I have ever worked with. From our very first meeting, they were attentive and adamant about narrowing down exactly what my vision was. They got deep in the weeds on discovering what language we want to speak to our customers and how that will play out in the world. Through them, I learned that BRAND is much more than a name, logo or website. It has a life of its own. For it to work, there has to be 100% alignment between the business and the consumer. I could not thank them enough for the time and dedication they spent on my project.
