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Monica Rich Kosann by Here
There’s been a fair bit of chatter in recent times in the brand design world about the ‘new codes of luxury’ – how today’s hip young well-to-dos are eschewing the signifiers of yesteryear (ostentation, gold, bling, anything remotely showy) for a more understated aesthetic. Being fabulously rich today, then, is perhaps a little like the whole ‘no makeup’ thing: anyone...
Phoenix Organics by Marx Design
It’s a tale as old as time: a once beloved brand – a pioneering brand even, the first of its kind or category – that gets rather lost over the years, muddled in a confusion of sub-brands and spin-offs. Such brands often fall victim to a sort of design by committee – and rarely intentionally: as companies grow and expand...
Wolfe Bros Cellos by OurCreative
The likes of Strawberry & Lime Kopparberg and Old Mout Cider (pronounced, either ‘moot’, or ‘mowt’, few know, few care coz that cute little kiwi bird is so distracting) are both, let’s face it, the semi-grown up, pretty acceptable face of alcopops: people order them at very normal (even gastro!) pubs and no one bats an eyelid – the same...
ITO Gin by Analogue
ITO Gin is first and foremost, brilliantly eyecatching – huge fluorescent letters, the epitome of ‘make it big’ when it comes to a brand name; deep black bottles – behind this bold exterior lies a narrative woven across cultures, histories, and generations. The brand was born of a collaboration between Komaki Distillery in Japan and UK-based gin brand Kokoro. However,...
Fire Island Tea by Stephen Moss
Fire Island has always seemed far more a mythical utopia than a real, physical geographical, location to me; in part simply because of its name: Fire Island seems wrenched straight out of Greek legend – elemental, fearsome, alluring, almost a contradiction as surrounded by water yet inherently burning. But mostly, it’s thanks to Frank O’Hara, whose mid-20th-century poetry eschewed the...
Cashflow Vodka by Marx Design
Few brands dare to break the fourth wall, and all too often those that do, do it badly. Some smash through that wall Mr Blobby style – sure, it’s fun, but it’s so bold that it feels a little ridiculous, à la Brewdog’s ADVERT adverts by Uncommon. Some try to be a ickle-wickle bit clever but land on saccharinely twee:...
Muse Group by Collins
Muse Group exists as a collection of digital products covering all aspects of the creative process in music. This reviewer is familiar with Audacity and has used it in the past, but other platforms include Ultimate Guitar, MuseClass, MuseScore, and MuseHub. These tools are used by a range of professional musicians, budding amateurs, and everyone in between, working across all...
Windham Campbell Prizes by Pentagram
Back in 2013, Michael Bierut’s team at Pentagram (Twelve Labs, Becan & Natural History Museum) created the identity for Yale University’s inaugural Windham Campbell Prizes, a major literary award that honours outstanding achievement in the fields of fiction, non-fiction and drama. Bestowed by the estate of the writer Donald Windham and his companion Sandy M. Campbell, the awards are administered...
12 by Base Design
If New York really is the city that never sleeps, that’s in no small part thanks to coffee – and now, increasingly, a newer entrant to the socially acceptable uppers scene, matcha. Capitalising on the growing interest in the sludgy green pick-me-up is 12, a new-ish matcha-centric café and retail store that opened last year in Manhattan’s NoHo area. Sited...
Big Cartel by How&How
Big Cartel launched in 2005 as a low-cost, easily customisable ecommerce platform specifically aimed at artists and other creatives. In the two decades since, the platform has quietly revolutionised what it is to be an independent maker, powering more than $2.5 billion in sales from ceramicists, jewellery designers, illustrators, and the occasional medieval tapestry revivalist. But as the marketplace for,...
Sigma by Stockholm Design Lab
You could argue that there’s a fair few similarities in terms of Japan and Sweden’s approach to design, and the aesthetics of life more generally. Both are known often for a specific kind of minimalism – a tastefulness that eschews fluff, luxuriates in crisp whites and keeps its edges, everything in its right place, rules and order and form following...
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