Craft beer has become a hugely competitive market to enter. It seems a rather obvious thing to write, but it’s quite something to have been part of the generation that saw its rise. It’s also provided a lot of great imagery for design blogs, and moved freely between both brand building and just plain visual delight. To see large fridges within...
From à la mode Lick paint to gramable Aokka coffee, everything comes in a tin these days. The rise of metal packaging solutions in food and beverages, healthcare, household and consumer is expected to accelerate by 3.1% year-on-year from 2021 to 2030, driven by the demand for sustainable alternatives to plastic and lightweight substitutes for glass. Aesthetically speaking, the tin...
Panettone has origins as far back as ancient Rome, but its connection to Christmas was first established in the eighteenth century. This sweet bread – originally from Milan – has earned its place across the globe as a staple of the festive season. However, earlier this summer, Barcelona-based twins Chiara and Francesca Pavolucci opened a bakery to bring panettone to...
Few products have successfully integrated ethical, sustainable and environmental concerns with a product than coffee. It’s hard to imagine a time when the conditions of cultivation (both human and environmental) were not equal to flavour and – if we’re getting technical – whether the roast is blended or single origin. With its smaller volumes, the speciality coffee market has challenged...
Agricultural practices are constantly changing to provide greater crop yields. In an effort to achieve this goal, modern farming has created a host of ecological side effects. Most notably, overconsumption of water and a reliance on chemical fertilisers, GMOs and pesticides. Plenty is an indoor vertical farm providing green produce to the masses through sustainable practices, using less space and...
New products, new markets and new consumer groups generate new aesthetics – or, at least, you would hope so. Too often, style migrates from one category to another, or the identity of a sub-culture (visually speaking), is exploited in a commercial context. This is where ‘authenticity’ emerges, to support genuine origin credentials, or to mask the appropriation with narrative context....
Skin is the human body’s largest organ while skincare is the fastest growing segment of the beauty industry. Yet with all their promises of ‘dewy’, ‘glowing’ and ‘blemish free’, most products on the market, are focused on the face. Direct-to-consumer business Soft Services creates skincare products for specific body skin problems, such as acne, ingrown hairs, stretch marks and fungal...
In case you’ve missed it, low and no-alcohol drinks are a thing. With over 20% of adults in the UK claiming to be teetotal, abstinence is cool: Brewdog is now Punk AF (that’s ‘alcohol free’), Thomson & Scott’s Noughty is (fairly) nice, and Seedlip is sexy. This sobriety revolution is driven, in part, by the mindfully sceptical Gen Z, turned...
Pizza making is a lot like brand identity design. It has many potential configurations: it can be generic or wildly individual, but fundamentally, it’s systematic, a framework of organised elements. It is a base that holds a variety of communicative assets and techniques (the toppings, if you will). Appeal is determined by how well this is orchestrated, and how well...
The pandemic catalysed the at-home market for a whole host of products. Paired with social isolation, it’s no wonder that one of the markets to benefit would be alcohol. Just like coffee, dried flowers and cleaning products, alcohol was packed down into letterbox-sized parcels and sent through the post. Mail-order cocktails have been a somewhat surprising development. The drama, theatre...
Although its recent rise to popularity has been rapid, running a quick search on ‘kombucha’ reveals that until the 21st century it had seen little category growth since its creation, more than 2000 years ago. For the uninitiated, kombucha is a fermented, non-alcoholic sweetened tea containing vitamins, amino acids and nutrients. This mix of familiarity (as a tea), its sweetness...
According to Sweden’s travel and tourism website, craft beer enthusiasts will discover a ‘smorgasbord’ of artisanal, eco-friendly and organic things to drink there, with more microbreweries per capita than any other country (apart from the UK). Omaka joined the scene in September 2020, at the height of the pandemic, and with a slogan to match its fearless attitude: ‘taste before...