Hank’s Bagelry by Studio Ongarato

Sometimes, a brand identity can be deeply strategic, have a rich heritage or an involving narrative. Other times, it can be simply eye catching and cool. Suites of custom designed icons, art directed photography, tone of voice, motion behaviours, programmatic graphic elements and bespoke in-house content generating tools…. not every brand needs these. They’re colours to paint with. I call...

Society De La Rassi by Blurr Bureau

Ideas around the ‘new codes of luxury’ have come up a lot lately; an updated, contemporary take on what makes something look special, valuable, covetable, and ultimately, expensive. The long and short of it is that it’s out with the old – lavish foils, gold everywhere, bling and ornamentation and ostentation – and in with a quieter, more subtle aesthetic...

Pinky Swear by The Working Assembly

I could be totally wrong, but it really does look like New York-based branding agency The Working Assembly had a lot of fun working on the branding for Pinky Swear. A restaurant and cocktail lounge on Chrystie St on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Pinky Swear opened earlier this year as a fascinating concept unlike anything we’ve really encountered before: yes,...

Monica Rich Kosann by Here

There’s been a fair bit of chatter in recent times in the brand design world about the ‘new codes of luxury’ – how today’s hip young well-to-dos are eschewing the signifiers of yesteryear (ostentation, gold, bling, anything remotely showy) for a more understated aesthetic. Being fabulously rich today, then, is perhaps a little like the whole ‘no makeup’ thing: anyone...

Phoenix Organics by Marx Design

It’s a tale as old as time: a once beloved brand – a pioneering brand even, the first of its kind or category – that gets rather lost over the years, muddled in a confusion of sub-brands and spin-offs. Such brands often fall victim to a sort of design by committee – and rarely intentionally: as companies grow and expand...

Wolfe Bros Cellos by OurCreative

The likes of Strawberry & Lime Kopparberg and Old Mout Cider (pronounced, either ‘moot’, or ‘mowt’, few know, few care coz that cute little kiwi bird is so distracting) are both, let’s face it, the semi-grown up, pretty acceptable face of alcopops: people order them at very normal (even gastro!) pubs and no one bats an eyelid – the same...

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Grale by Pentagram, 2025

Grale, formerly PlasticFri, is a Swedish company developing plant-based alternatives to plastic and other eco-friendly materials. Designed by Pentagram, the new Grale logo  has been designed to stand on its own and function alongside other recycling and up-cycling symbols. As a flower, with petals that gradually transition in a rotary manner, the notion of sustainability is clearly expressed and in...

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Perplexity by Smith & Diction, 2023

With a mission to connect users to sources of knowledge from across the internet, the Perplexity logo, designed by Smith & Diction, combines a computer cursor (access) and an asterisk (citations) with an open book (knowledge) and the suggestion of windows (the internet and multiple perspectives). These combine to form an X from the company name. In it’s simple static...

ITO Gin by Analogue

ITO Gin is first and foremost, brilliantly eyecatching – huge fluorescent letters, the epitome of ‘make it big’ when it comes to a brand name; deep black bottles – behind this bold exterior lies a narrative woven across cultures, histories, and generations. The brand was born of a collaboration between Komaki Distillery in Japan and UK-based gin brand Kokoro. However,...

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Muse Group by Collins, 2025

Collin’s has built for Muse Group a visual identity with a sense of boisterous improvisation and spontaneous musical expansion. It’s expressive in motion and derives its custom typographic forms from musical notation. Graphic notions of tension and composition find commonality with musical principles to generate a distinctive ‘M’. See more of this project here....

Fire Island Tea by Stephen Moss

Fire Island has always seemed far more a mythical utopia than a real, physical geographical, location to me; in part simply because of its name: Fire Island seems wrenched straight out of Greek legend – elemental, fearsome, alluring, almost a contradiction as surrounded by water yet inherently burning. But mostly, it’s thanks to Frank O’Hara, whose mid-20th-century poetry eschewed the...

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Royal Institute of Philosophy by Only, 2025

The ongoing and never-ending search for truth, beautifully expressed by Manchester-based design studio Only as question marks revolving around a centre point. A simple idea, well-executed for the Royal Institute of Philosophy....