Emily Gosling
Rolus by Re
Back in the early 00s – the era when arguably Hollyoaks was at its zenith, and bellybutton piercings their most bejeweled – Botox was gradually emerging from the hushed clinics of Harley Street and LA to become part of common parlance. As such, brands cottoned on to the word’s ‘eternal youth’ connotations: I distinctly remember a shampoo ad promising that...
Yaté by Herefor
Long gone are the days when ‘energy drink’ connoted unwashed teenage gamers, amped up Twitch streamers, hungover/still going city boys on the Tube, or 2-4-1 deals on vodka Red Bull in sticky-floored suburban student nightclubs. Like many things – such as reading books, going for a walk, or having a bath – the energy drink sphere has now collided with...
Fuku by Red Antler
Fuku (no sniggering at the back please) is a ‘fine brining establishment’ – i.e. some sort of eatery, you can safely assume – specialising in a specific type of chicken ‘sando’, or in normal language, ‘sandwich’. According to Red Antler, the Brooklyn based design agency behind Fuku’s branding, ‘the Fuku sando first hit the scene as a secret menu item...
Spellbound by Studio Gruhl
Berlin-based techno label Spellbound was founded last year by Shaleen, a DJ, producer, and the woman behind the SURD series of femme- and queer-centric events. Known for her 90’s-infused vinyl-only sets and her ethos of looking back at techno’s roots in order to move it forward, it makes sense that her own label is something of an ode to Berlin’s...
Suupaa by A Friend of Mine
There isn’t a shortage of well-executed, interesting branding projects out there – ones that are joyful, witty, slick, or just perfectly fit a brief – which do their job perfectly. But 99% of the time, you can sort of see where they came from – the broader cultural spheres they’re playing into (nostalgia; fauxstalgia; irony, for instance) or the wider...
Chester Zoo by How&How
I’d lazily assumed that, like jazz record sleeves and Dutch public transport, zoos were one of those sectors with a visual legacy that’s packed with game-changing brand design – the sort that fills the pages of graphic design histories, up there with the likes of Paul Rand’s ‘IBM’ and the FedEx arrow and Alan Fletcher’s gloriously clever ampersand trickery for...
being by Zuru Edge
What does Gen Z really want? It’s the question at the heart of a thousand nigh-on identical think pieces; and at the fulcrum, it seems, of endless board meetings chaired by Gen Xers, and populated by ‘geriatric Millennials’, like me. My generation was simple. We wanted avocados, didn’t we? We wanted everything to be in millennial pink and to have...
Stuzzi by Perron-Roettinger
Hot sauce branding has long been dominated by certain overarching tropes: there’s the hyper-trad (Cholula, Tabasco, Sriracha et al); the twee of the kitchen-table-scale small-batch brigade; and the I WILL RIP YOUR HEAD OFF! camp where products have names like ‘death’. In the first and second of those camps in particular, there’s a lot of decent branding. But this new...
Story Espresso by For the People
The unity of coffee-boffins and great typographic choices seems to be having a moment right now on BP&O. Just the other week we covered the truly superb work for Dark Arts Coffee by Not Wieden + Kennedy. Now, though, we’re heading down under – specifically to the Sydney suburb of Lane Cove, home to Story Café. Story Café opened in...
OSESP by Polar
When São Paulo-based studio Polar was tasked with rebranding one of Brazil’s most important cultural institutions – the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo (São Paulo Symphony Orchestra), better known as OSESP – its solution was an identity system that doesn’t just depict classical music but actively embody it. OSESP’s previous identity had served it well, with its 2003-2007...
Dark Arts Coffee by NOT Wieden+Kennedy
If a brand that fuses memes, hot takes, occultism, and coffee is going to succeed anywhere, it’s probably in east London. Dark Arts Coffee started out in 2014 in a Homerton railway arch, and managed to corner that distinct subgenre of goth/metal/biker-ish aesthetics which opts for craft ale over snakebite; Hackney over Camden; self-care over self-destruction. Where the old guard,...
Tameko by DutchScot
Founded by Dominika Leveau and Chim Sonne-Schmidt in 2021, textile brand Tameko feels thoroughly ‘Scandi’ in aesthetics and ethos – it’s all clean lines, a singularly restrained stance on beauty. It’s form following function. Tameko embodies that very contemporary take on the luxury sensibility that never shouts about its status. It doesn’t need to: luxe quietly but confidently oozes from...