Franki is an app for restaurants: people that like to visit them, and people who run them. Billed as a “social restaurant discovery and rewards platform”, Franki was founded by Austin, Texas-based Eugene Varricchio and Nick Bennett in 2020 (obviously not the best year for dining out, by any stretch), before expanding more broadly the following year. The platform itself...
Fitness and health tracking apps are not generally known for their sense of fun. The likes of MyFitnessPal, while great in terms of functionality, for the most part, keep the design stuff resolutely serious, no-nonsense, and perfunctory. Meanwhile the likes of Strava elicit joy through very few things, the main one being when people decide to run in a shape...
If we wanted to be poetic about it, we could describe QR codes as the inhabitants of the pixel-thin gap between our physical and digital realities; the conduit between IRL and URL. Once a novelty, perennially often a bit of a pain in the arse, they really came into their own during the pandemic when suddenly things like handling paper...
The largest companies in the world rely on QR codes for the successful management of their daily operations. Uniqode helps brands connect with customers in the physical world, the digital one and between the two. Koto visualised this through the metaphor of stitching, “demonstrating the joining together of two planes with a simple needle and thread.” The effect is to...
It can’t be easy designing the identity for a brand or company that’s hard to define, or which isn’t easily explained by that ‘new product, familiar ideas’ trope – the sorts of things described as ‘Like Tinder, but for cats!’ or ‘CityMapper for life decisions’, or ‘Uber for people who want to try dogging but can’t drive’ (if any investor...
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...
Koto’s new work is undoubtedly gorgeous – after all, what’s not to love about a suite of very cute dinosaurs? Especially when they’re rendered in a charming faux naif sort of style, and the whole colour palette is based around Barney & Friends purpley pink and the effervescently Gen Z-baiting neon of ‘terminal green’. The project in question is Koto’s...
Like many a geriatric millennial, a lot of my childhood was joyfully spent in front of the telly absorbing cultural pillars like Zig and Zag, Stoppit and Tidyup, and, of course, Wales’ finest export after Charlotte Church, Fireman Sam. Alongside the titular Sam, the show starred icons including ‘Naughty’ Norman Price (fun fact – my dad once mended the boiler...
Certain sectors lend themselves beautifully to innovative, eye-catching design – things like craft beer, perhaps; or beauty; or small-run editorial publications. Investment firms aren’t traditionally among those sectors that engender more outre, bold design work. And that’s partly the reason that this work for Partech, a global tech investment firm headquartered in Paris, stands out. Created by brand and digital...