Food and Drink
Order creates a delightfully design history-steeped identity for Salt Lick on Salt Creek – but what actually is it?
It’s not all too often that it takes more than a minute or two of looking at a brand design case study to know what the brand actually is. It’s not rocket science – for FMCG, any product or packaging shots usually give it away (with some obvious category-defying exceptions of course, like when toothpaste masquerades as high-end beauty products,...
All Purpose’s identity for Two Tribes Brewing is resolutely ‘craft’, while also turning its back on all which that signifies
Founded in 2017 by veterans of London’s 1990s club scene, craft beer company Two Tribes is based at Tileyard in King’s Cross, where its brewery and taproom – dubbed Campfire – also function as a venue for music, food and all that other usual jazz you find in the sort of newish site that springs up all shiny and new...
Koto’s new branding for restaurant discovery app Franki feels lively, thoroughly human, and just the right amount of cute
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...
Vrints-Kolsteren’s gorgeous identity for pizza restaurant Napoli on the Road brings a little mischief to minimalism
It’s not all that often you come across a project which I’m confident that 99.9% of people couldn’t possibly slate – or at least 99.9% of people with even the most flimsy interest in/awareness of graphic design, visual culture, or just generally looking at nice things. >Such is the case, however, with this beautiful rare beast – a piece of...
JKR’s Tropical Smoothie Cafe rebrand is deliciously on the nose, and all the better for it
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a phrase bandied about a fair bit across all facets of existence, but in some cases, that sentiment really does make sense. Such is the case with the iconography of ‘tropical’: it’s bright, it’s bold; it’s perennially close to the edge of a big body of water (warm ocean, sparkly surfaced pool);...
Studio South merges rigour and ridiculousness in the best way possible in its superb identity for noodle joint Oodles
There’s so much to love about this identity – not least that it manages to make a noodle joint look like a perennially hip skate brand (yes, I am obviously talking about Supreme – all no-nonsense stocky black lettering on postbox red backgrounds). The identity in question is that for the delectably named Oodles – more on that moniker shortly...
Mucca makes New York supermarket company Fairway’s everyday essentials anything but basic
Founded in 1933, Fairway Market is an independent regional supermarket chain with stores across New York. The grocery retailer sells food and household goods, and over the past eight decades or so has built its reputation on an unusually broad selection of hard-to-find products and a distinctly New York character. As well as selling a number of different brands, Fairway...
Perky Bros puts restrained Southern hospitality before shouty branding in its identity for Tennessee resort Southall
Branding parlance often deifies qualities like ‘boldness’ – being ‘brave’, ‘zigging when others zag’, ‘disruption,’ and so on and so forth. Some projects, however, demand and deserve the absolute opposite; the sign of a good designer, perhaps, is to intuitively know which one is which. This is one such project. Southall is resort set across 325 acres just outside Franklin,...
All Purpose ditches wine clichés in its lurid new identity for natural wine importer Ancestrel
Based in leafy yummy-mummyish south London enclave Forest Hill, Ancestrel (yes that’s a deliberate misspelling) is a wine shop and so much more – it’s proudly the first company in the UK to import natural wine. Having started life in 2016, Ancestrel has spent the decade since making a name for itself as a renowned importer, wholesaler, and retailer of...
Pentagram nails controlled chaos in its identity for Manhattan “shophouse” style Thai restaurant LenLen
It’s not easy to make an identity look genuinely effortless – more often than not, the very intention to do so renders the result looking the exact opposite. And nothing, no one, ever wants to be levelled with the accusation of appearing to be ‘trying too hard’. However, Pentagram New York’s partner Andrea Trabucco-Campos and team has succeeded in that...
Coca-Cola’s new identity by JKR proves that sometimes the smartest rebrand is barely a rebrand at all
It’s hard to think of a bigger name client than Coca-Cola: the brand is so huge that it’s become a shorthand for anything meaning ‘global mega-corp’. Its reach is so vast, its history so firmly cemented in culture that it practically owns a certain combination of red and white; a specific sort of alliterative script serif type. Even its bottle...
Makebardo’s charming illustrations for Cairo cafe/music venue E11VN just about rescue a rather hideous brand name
It’s never fun being negative about a project – it’s far more gratifying to show really great work, genuinely exciting or useful brands and organisations – and get under the skin of what makes them so. Obviously, a fair bit of this comes down to subjective taste; taking our own experiences and interpretations and cultural backgrounds and personalities and all...