On first hearing, ‘Florentia Village’ is a ridiculous name for a warehouse complex in South Tottenham, as if Hyacinth Bouquet had somehow risen from the grave and gained a seat on the borough council in order to render floridly Italianate a grimy chunk of East London. However, the name does in fact arise from an organic nomenclatural etymology: indicating ‘flourishing’ or...
SPIN Studio continues its working relationship with the Design Museum (after branding its Waste Age exhibition in 2021 and Wim Crouwel’s first UK retrospective in 2011) by putting its inimitable spin (this won’t happen again, I promise) on Future Observatory, the museum’s ‘national research programme for the green transition’. Perhaps more so than any other studio working today, SPIN has...
It’s always satisfying to see smart, bold new identity designs for a household name brand, often by one of the big name studios: things like the still-hyped 2021 JKR Burger King rebrand; Collins’ Girl Scouts revamp in 2022; Springetts’ fresh look for Ryvita that same year, which makes the much-maligned crispbread seem a lot more palatable. And while such projects...
For a type-nerd (hello!) there are few things more seductive than a beautiful, beguiling letterform. But what makes such shapes even more siren-like is when they leap off the page and come to life, not just in motion, digitally; but in a physical environment. The branding for new private members club Curve Club, then, certainly ticks a lot of boxes...
From Wes Anderson to ‘accepting the job’ and distinctly dystopian new romantic relationship models; in recent years, it’s felt like you can’t move for chat about AI – its weirdest uses, its hilarious shortcomings, and a hell of a lot of scare-mongering about it stealing our jobs. The platform that’s dominated much of the conversation is ChatGPT, an AI chatbot...
‘The story of the internet is the story of life’. Understood in this way, rebranding Malaysia’s challenger internet service provider Time presented the appropriately existentially titled For the People with a daunting task. As legislation in Malaysia shifted, requiring companies like Time to share their infrastructure with other ISPs, competition has grown. As such, Time needed to evolve its brand. What is...
The hamburger is an American icon. It conjures associations with all-American diners and drive-thrus, backyard cookouts and family gatherings; American values, such as entrepreneurship, as well as less positive attributes of Western countries, like obesity. The burger’s visual identity is inseparable from its history and has been solidified time and time again as the big fast food franchises conquered the...
There’s nothing more human than food says Nyati Gupta, CEO and Co-founder Fork & Good. However, the first place people in more temperate regions will feel the effect of climate change will be on their plate. ‘To be able to eat your favourite dishes without the environmental impact, that would be the dream’. Although vegetarianism and veganism have made it to...
Straight up, I’ll admit that I struggle to resist a condensed sans typeface set in uppercase. I’ll also confess that I’ve spent the last hour (no lie), trying to identify this one… Helvetica? Hell no. Railroad Gothic? The wrong track. Söhne? Sö not. Must be Knockout? Another blow. For Druk’s sake is it Druk? Well, whatever it is, it’s neatly...
When I first caught Perky Bros’ latest project I misread it as ‘Tempo’, the speed at which music is played. Timing is everything, or so it is said. For real estate company Tembo this notion takes the form of patience; the time to grow gently and judiciously. Property development, momentarily paused during the pandemic, seems to have recovered and is again...
Triboro worked on its first restaurant branding project over a decade ago, at a time when the folklore was that if you were a restaurant serving traditional food the visual language should evoke the region and time period of the cuisine. This was intuitive and, as Triboro founder David Heasty recounts, led to some well-crafted and beautiful results but often leaned...
After seeing Collins’ work for the San Francisco Symphony – a pioneering typographic and digital experiment with Swiss foundry Dinamo – I thought it would be some time before I’d be surprised by another visual identity in the music space. Sure, there’s an abundance of styles and artists to be inspired by within an art that has evolved in tandem...