Graphic Design Reviews

Hotel Park Ave NYC by Colt

Located on the corner of Park Avenue South and East 30th Street in Manhattan’s Midtown, Hotel Park Ave is the artist formerly known as the Mondrian Park Avenue. Its change in name is thanks to its change in owner: international hospitality company Lore Group announced its acquisition of the site and mooted its subsequent rebrand late last year, and to...

Project Send by Foreign Policy

Since their advent, kinetic and variable type have become a familiar part of the lexicon of brand design. It’s little surprise really: they offer a way to make an identity consistent yet dynamic; uniform but multifarious; endlessly flexible with countless opportunities to modify mood, tone, and messaging. But few projects seem to use kinetic type as a way to visually...

Ten by Paul Belford Ltd

I’ve been writing about the work of Paul Belford Ltd. (Next Chapter, Spudos & Social Enterprise) for very nearly fifteen years. Initially, and admittedly, the articles practically wrote themselves, which was ideal for a self-taught designer with very little experience but keen to take an approach to learning that was very much my own. That was to write about a...

Saaristo by Bond

‘Saaristo’ is the generic term for ‘archipelago’ in Finnish, but – to the outside world – it’s sufficiently distinctive to refer to the entire region in Western Finland, which now makes up a new tourism brand. This brand intends to generate more interest in (and visitors to) the world’s largest archipelago: a collection of 40,000 islands. This scale makes it...

Chester Zoo by How&How

I’d lazily assumed that, like jazz record sleeves and Dutch public transport, zoos were one of those sectors with a visual legacy that’s packed with game-changing brand design – the sort that fills the pages of graphic design histories, up there with the likes of Paul Rand’s ‘IBM’ and the FedEx arrow and Alan Fletcher’s gloriously clever ampersand trickery for...

Ultraderp by Mucho

The name Ultraderp seeks to combine all things extreme (think ‘ultrafast’, or ‘ultra marathon’) with ‘derp’, which is, apparently, the face a dog makes when they don’t know what’s happening. The product that bears this name is an ultra-light, easily-packable dog leash that can be worn on the collar and deployed when needed, simply by pulling the tongue-like tab. This...

Spudos by Paul Belford Ltd

We live in chaotic and excessive times. Brands and politicians alike demand attention, clamouring for consideration and creating – quite frankly, for me at least – an unwelcome cacophony of competing voices and issues. All too often, the lines between competing interest are blurred, and even absurd. I crave clarity and simplicity, particularly when it comes to basic consumables. What’s...

Wholy Greens by Control Studio

Wholy Greens is a B-Corp certified Dutch food brand dedicated to transforming the way people perceive and enjoy vegetables. Its mission is to create a mindset shift from ‘having to eat veggies’ to ‘genuinely loving veggies’ – and it uses pasta as its primary vehicle. It’s a smart set up, not least because, frankly, what experiences aren’t more enjoyable when...

Sustana by Collins

For non-design nuts or print nerds, paper might seem pretty high up in the scale of banality and boringness. That’s likely the reason that the Wernham Hogg paper company was the setting of The Office: paper, and Slough, formed an easy sitcom shorthand for all that was unremarkable, trivial, and emphatically dry. But in fact, there’s a lot more to...

Chyna Club by Bibliothèque

Over the past few decades, high-street menu-scribbler Wagamama has become a rare beacon of actually-very-nice-food among a sea of uninspiring spicy chicken, Giraffes, and Five Guys (arguably, simply too many guys). It turns out Wagamama has some pretty big-name siblings: Mayfair’s Michelin starred, celebrity-beloved Hakkasan; Thai stalwart Busaba; Cantonese eaterie Yauatcha; and Turkish restaurant chain Yamabahce all sit within the...

West Loop by Landor

The official blurb that surrounds Chicago’s West Loop area is that it’s the city’s ‘hottest neighbourhood… a foodie mecca’, according to Choose Chicago, a ‘cultural powerhouse’, in the words of Landor, which recently created its new brand identity. Having never been to West Loop, or even Chicago, it’s hard to get a grasp of what this all really means. Such...

Dirty Vegan by Jens Nilsson

Having been a vegan for almost 20 years now, various tropes have come and gone. In the early days, for the health conscious it was pretty much all about brown paper packaged Holland and Barrett goods, and references to the Young Ones cooking lentils. For the not so health conscious (hello!) it was ketchup sandwiches. Gradually the Quorn contingent came...