At some point over the past half decade or so, someone somewhere decided that vowels were profoundly uncool: see Anthropologie’s wedding line BHLDN; “virtual sneaker” brand [what?!] and Nike acquisition RTFK; Blndr (yes, it’s a blender) and the likes of Tumblr, Pixlr, and Flickr, which dared to sneak in just the one. Reading such words feels a bit like learning...
Plume is a Denver-based telehealth service (or ‘virtual-clinic’) tailored specifically to the needs of the trans community across the US, offering a range of services including prescriptions for oestrogen or testosterone. This is a hostile political landscape to step into, but Plume is doing it with bright and bold panache, courtesy of a fresh rebrand from London-based studio Human After...
Deodorant isn’t traditionally a hotbed of innovation: for the most part, ‘women’s’ products don an unremarkable raft of white packaging (freshness!); blue, pragmatic type; and vague, rarely-kept promises about lasting for 72-hours. For the men, packs are sombre shades of black, dark blue, or grey (manly!) and just as drearily practical as the women’s. Deodorant, for the most part, has...
Most people agree that demarcations like ‘millennial’, ‘Gen Z’ and ‘Gen X’ are redundant – little more than age brackets created for the convenience of marketing teams which have become shorthand for a series of traits we’re expected to believe somehow define an entire generation. It’s curious, then, that for every diatribe against such groupings there’s at least ten more...
In recent years, employers have been rushing to offer an increasingly elaborate range of workplace perks, from the WeWork style beer on tap approach to sleep pods (begging the question, if you have to sleep at work, is this really a perk at all?) to Ben & Jerry’s rather busman’s holiday-ish promise that employees can take home three pints of...
Ostro isn’t the easiest of companies to make sense of. Billed as a ‘life science software company’, it straddles a number of different services that are both consumer and clinician-facing. In simple terms, though, it looks to help consumers and healthcare providers alike to navigate the complex, labyrinthine ins and outs of the complex US healthcare system; using software to...
London-based creative agency Among Equals recently worked with ‘below-the-waist wellness company’ Wype on its brand identity and art direction, aiming to help the company build a new brand that would set it up for its next phase of growth. Wype is a gel that was designed to ‘turn any toilet paper into an eco-friendly wet wipe, all at the squeeze...
‘The weaker the brand character, the greater the need for distinctive visuals’. Said someone, at some stage. And of course, the principle works in reverse. It’s an important point: if the core is strong, the exterior can – and often should – be more malleable, softer, less obviously an exercise in ‘branding’. Countries, cities, communities; we all have a sense...
International creative studio network Base Design is behind the branding for Divine Farmer, a California-based wellness company with an identity centred on New Age-style iconography and a heavy reliance on storytelling. Divine Farmer was founded by Polina Bowler, an acupuncturist and herbalist and owner of LA-based holistic wellness centre East Meets West who came up with the idea for the...
The skincare industry is a varied visual landscape. At one end of the spectrum, brands like Glossier and Soft Services (reviewed July 2022) have found balance in softness and understated minimalism. At the other Dr.Jart+ (reviewed Jan. 2018) and Malin+Goetz bring pharmacy-chic with functional, type-led packaging. And then we have our classic, heritage brands – like Kiehl’s and Elizabeth Arden – which...
Self-care is nothing new, but our understanding and appreciation of it as a society has grown enormously in the last half century, and especially recently when it became a trending topic during the isolation periods of coronavirus in 2020 and 2021 (70 million hashtags on Instagram, and counting). In the dawn of this enlightened thinking, products in this space have...
Skin is the human body’s largest organ while skincare is the fastest growing segment of the beauty industry. Yet with all their promises of ‘dewy’, ‘glowing’ and ‘blemish free’, most products on the market, are focused on the face. Direct-to-consumer business Soft Services creates skincare products for specific body skin problems, such as acne, ingrown hairs, stretch marks and fungal...