Pilo by 5.5

Youth hostels aren’t exactly associated with luxury – nor great branding. For the most part, they’re deemed the cheap and cheerful option; a trip where home comforts are sacrificed for socially minded living, affordability, and a more adventurous sensibility than the average Travelodge. They’re the sorts of places where creaky bunk beds, shower queues, pillows so thin they’re barely more...

Plume by Human After All

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...

Hometree by How&How

It’s all well and good for a design agency to make some wild, boundary-pushing, all-singing all-dancing work for things like Gen Z healthcare products; or ‘top shelf’ spirits; or craft beer. But most client projects aren’t going to be the sort of thing that merits bright orange and typography that dances around the boundaries of legibility. And arguably, it’s those...

BP&O Voices

Rich Baird on Design History: Bata by Design Research Unit, 1969

The story of Design Research Unit’s 1969 logo for Czechoslovakian shoe manufacture and retailer Bata....

Wholesome by Universal Favourite

Wholesome is a new breed of supermarket that doesn’t fill a gap in a market so much as it positions itself at a nexus of multiple intersecting demands. The pursuit of ethical grocery and household shopping has, for decades, been both deeply commendable and exasperatingly time-consuming, expensive and convoluted. One supermarket will stock Fairtrade products but have a scant gluten-free...

Expensify by The Collected Works

According to The Collected Works, one of the main reasons its recent client Expensify was looking to rebrand was to remedy a perceived mismatch between the ‘wacky’ vibe of the brand’s marketing and ads (namely its 2019 Superbowl commercial), and its core visual identity. Which begs the question – how far does a brand identity itself have to mimic or...

Recchiuti by Manual

Recchiuti Confections is a San Francisco-based gourmet chocolatier that creates chocolates with unique flavour combinations. Using traditional European techniques, with locally sourced ingredients from Northern Californian farms and markets, Recchiuti’s chocolates have earned a loyal customer base and several accolades. After 25 years in business, Recchiuti sought the expertise of Manual – a local design studio – for a brand...

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Erbert by AUGE

Few countries on Earth take their food as seriously as Italy. It’s not difficult to justify the enormous pride Italians take in their spectacular culinary heritage, with their cuisine considered the ‘most exported’ on the planet. But while the wider world is undeniably in thrall, Italians’ patriotic palettes create and necessitate a notoriously conservative domestic cooking culture. Italian ingredients, recipes...

Casa Malka by Nihilo

Branding agency Nihilo is more adept than most at shattering stereotypes – both in the work they make, and in terms of who the agency is, and what it’s all about. Founded by designer Emunah Winer and writer Margaret Kerr-Jarrett in Israel in 2021 and now based in Columbus, Ohio, the agency takes its name from the Latin term ‘creatio...

Phil’s Finest by Gander

It’s a moot point now that the last few years have seen an explosion in all things vegan and ‘plant-based’ (a term arguably used lightly, when you consider the ingredients in many no-meat, no-dairy, no-animal product alternatives). There’s vegan cheese that actually tastes nice, there’s mushroom and hemp ‘magic mince’, even vegan tuna. I’m writing this while eating a vegan...

Beams by Only Studio

The Beams is ‘an expansive new venue and event space on the Royal Docks in the heart of East London’ (that’s as long as you prefer your cartography loosely impressionist). Manchester-based Only Studio was tasked with branding the former Tate & Lyle sugar factory. The award-winning agency has previous form in the field of London industrial-eyesores-turned-cultural-juggernauts: it was also responsible...