I’d never really heard of Osaka’s Dotonbori district before encountering this project, let alone been there. Neither, I’d guess, have many of the patrons of Tsukiyo, a modern Japanese street food restaurant inspired by the area and based in Sydney’s Darling Square. But the power of great branding is such that even just looking at the identity in 2D, on...
Hanbury is an American architecture firm, founded in 1979 and based in Virginia. According to international agency Base Design, which recently delivered a rebrand for the practice, the last decade has witnessed a ‘transformative’ period of growth and diversification with the team increasing from 40 to 160 individuals, and expanding from one to eight office spaces. For Hanbury, which started...
‘Dinner ladies’ doesn’t have the most glamorous connotations in England – depending on your experience at school, it likely conjures up memories of scoops of greying, tepid mash-adjacent slop unceremoniously plopped onto a plate; something to do with turkey dinosaurs; a troop of formidable but visibly jaded people responsible for making every school smell like on-the-turn cottage pie from around...
In recent years, we’ve seen artisanal ice cream brands make an obvious departure from the maximalist, saccharine branding that their mainstream counterparts are so known for. In particular, the typeface-heavy, superimposed ice cream tubs of US-based brands have become a benchmark for exactly the kind of branding that more gourmet confectioners are keen to avoid. While Ben & Jerry’s iconic...
As well as being a coastal city in south west Italy (formed in 1923 by none other than Benito Mussolini), Imperia is a pasta machine company that was formed from a ‘little artisan workshop’ in 1932. Imperia soon began to distribute pasta machines around the world; mainly catering to the US’ large Italian community. From its plant in Sant’Ambrogio, Turin,...
There have been some brilliant logo designs inspired by the very buildings they represent. The Centre Pompidou, for instance, bears a powerfully stark logo that’s been largely unchanged since it was first created in the 1970s: six black stripes crossed by two zigzags representing the site’s ‘caterpillar’ escalator, one of the most famous parts of Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers’...
The Royal Television Society’s annual two-day event at The University of Cambridge brings together leading television industry bigwigs to ponder the present and future of the small screen. This year, over 350 luminaries descended on Cambridge to contend with such weighty topics as ‘the future of media, the impact of AI, and the role of opinion in news’. Quite a...
As recognisable brands go, LEGO is up there with the Nike swooshes and McGolden Arches of this world. Pretty much anything in that red and yellow lockup with vaguely Stay Puft-esque lettering (naturally there’s a LEGO version of that exact sailor) instantly says ‘LEGO’ – even when what it really says is, unlawfully, ‘Lepin’; or somehow scraping into legality, ‘Xinh’;...
When it comes to pre-packaged, semi-liquid meals and snacks, it’s easy to cite the infamous examples that are now stand-ins for whole demographics – I’m talking about SlimFast, the epitome of 90s diet culture; biohacker fuel Soylent; and, more recently, the US-based celeb-backed Daily Harvest, which made headlines due to product recall over food poisoning incidents. But there’s perhaps no...
Most people have likely never played the game ‘Italian Food or Italian Celebrity’; but trust me, it’s a pretty fun game – great for car/tube/bus journeys, or whiling away a bit of time after Christmas between gorging on something and watching Eastenders Omnibus. The premise is simple: someone says a name, the others guess if it’s an Italian food, or...
Frank Penny is a consultancy specialising in AML – anti-money laundering. Knowing next to nothing about financial matters, I had no idea such companies existed. But like pretty much any other business, to succeed and stand out against their competitors, at some point or another anti-AML consultants need to think about their brand identity. Stockholm studio Bedow was recently tasked...
When you think about the world of financial investments, an image of woven Scouts’ patches isn’t typically the first thing that springs to mind. Other contemporary brands (like Monzo, Chip, and Plum) aim for visual simplicity over complex personality development or extended world-building. But while a rugged outdoor theme might feel incongruous in the fin-tech space, Koto has skilfully capitalised...