Ding by Wildish & Co.
When I left the UK and landed in the Czech Republic – my home between 2010 and 2018 – I found a notable difference in advertising and branding between the two countries. Specifically, I saw an abundance of brand mascots. Now, of course, mascots were also used in the UK and have a global historical precedent, but I was struck...
Agua de Madre by Chris Chapman
It seems you can’t move for well-designed, wellness-adjacent alcohol-free drinks brands right now. In the past couple of months alone we’ve covered a nightlife inspired Yerba Maté that went hard on Big Drink NRG and Rolus, a new botanically enhanced entry into the (apparently) burgeoning ‘braincare beverage’ category. Making it a hat-trick is London-brewed water kefir brand Agua de Madre’s...
Uniqode by Koto
If we wanted to be poetic about it, we could describe QR codes as the inhabitants of the pixel-thin gap between our physical and digital realities; the conduit between IRL and URL. Once a novelty, perennially often a bit of a pain in the arse, they really came into their own during the pandemic when suddenly things like handling paper...
Veikkausliiga by Bond
How do you bring the fans, teams, and stadiums of the northernmost league together under a shared identity that captures the energy and passion that defines it? For Bond (Saaristo, Cable Factory & Northstar Film Alliance), the answer was in plain sight… the scarf – strewn across the terraces, held high, no matter the team or the weather. Veikkausliiga is...
Ambassaden by Bleed
Designed by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen, the Ambassaden’s angular modernist stature holds a striking presence in the heart of Oslo. When it opened in 1959, it functioned as the US embassy until its closure in the early 2000s. Fast-forward to today – the building has been reopened and its programming altered. It now operates as a multi-functional space that includes...
Full Pin by Rethink
Since 2020, engineers-turned-mushroom entrepreneurs Vathana Len and Daniel Vogt have been growing the fanciest mushrooms I’ve ever seen, from their shiny urban greenhouse in Montreal. From Pholiote adipeuse to King eryngii (I don’t know what those are either) and everything in between, Full Pin’s mushrooms are cultivated with meticulous precision and at an impressive rate – over 700 pounds per...
Rolus by Re
Back in the early 00s – the era when arguably Hollyoaks was at its zenith, and bellybutton piercings their most bejeweled – Botox was gradually emerging from the hushed clinics of Harley Street and LA to become part of common parlance. As such, brands cottoned on to the word’s ‘eternal youth’ connotations: I distinctly remember a shampoo ad promising that...
TwelveLabs by Pentagram
Remember when the conversation around gradients was about making ‘bad’ design look ‘better’? When RGB colours were frowned upon because you couldn’t print them? Yeah, those ideas feel a bit outdated now. HP Indigo can now run fluorescents affordably, and business card mock-ups (in RGB) are more about selling than printing. Technology marches on, expectations and standards evolve, and everything...
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...
Hip Pop by Robot Food
Running a design blog sharpens your eye for category conventions. Stick with it long enough, though, and you’ll start to see those conventions unravel. What once felt fixed begins to flex. This creates a challenge for writing about design: you’re constantly assessing the landscape, but that landscape is always shifting. Take minimalism, for example. Once the dominant aesthetic of the...
Yaté by Herefor
Long gone are the days when ‘energy drink’ connoted unwashed teenage gamers, amped up Twitch streamers, hungover/still going city boys on the Tube, or 2-4-1 deals on vodka Red Bull in sticky-floored suburban student nightclubs. Like many things – such as reading books, going for a walk, or having a bath – the energy drink sphere has now collided with...
Helions by Pentagram
HELIONS… now that sounds impressive. Something to do with helium atoms and stellar fusion, the force that powers stars? Or perhaps it’s invoking Helios, the Greek god of the sun, blazing his chariot across the sky? Nope – it’s actually a tribute to Helions Bumpstead in Essex, a beneficiary of the British gift for naming that also gave us Pratt’s...