When it comes to pre-packaged, semi-liquid meals and snacks, it’s easy to cite the infamous examples that are now stand-ins for whole demographics – I’m talking about SlimFast, the epitome of 90s diet culture; biohacker fuel Soylent; and, more recently, the US-based celeb-backed Daily Harvest, which made headlines due to product recall over food poisoning incidents. But there’s perhaps no...
It’s often the launch of major charity rebrands that puts the gulf between how the design world views something, and how the rest of the world might, into sharp relief. Countless headlines abound bemoaning the £££millions ‘spent on a new logo’, as if that’s just about all there is to it, and now the children/animals/elderly etc will directly suffer as...
Most people have likely never played the game ‘Italian Food or Italian Celebrity’; but trust me, it’s a pretty fun game – great for car/tube/bus journeys, or whiling away a bit of time after Christmas between gorging on something and watching Eastenders Omnibus. The premise is simple: someone says a name, the others guess if it’s an Italian food, or...
Not a new project, but one certainly worth revisiting; this work for whisky brand The Gospel scooped a fair few awards back in 2020, and it’s not hard to see why. The design agency behind everything from strategy and naming to brand story, creative direction, packaging design, and more is DDMMYY, based in Auckland, New Zealand. The team was initially...
Upgrade to
BP&O Plus
Read more
Mother New York and Mother Design have overseen the rebirth of Brooklyn Community Foundation as the commandingly named Brooklyn Org. The sea change arose from a desire to distance the organisation from ‘notions of traditional philanthropy, seen largely today as elitist, dysfunctional, and detached’. If that sounds like a solution to a problem that shouldn’t exist (who hates charities?) then...
Frank Penny is a consultancy specialising in AML – anti-money laundering. Knowing next to nothing about financial matters, I had no idea such companies existed. But like pretty much any other business, to succeed and stand out against their competitors, at some point or another anti-AML consultants need to think about their brand identity. Stockholm studio Bedow was recently tasked...
The ‘shoppy shop’ trend shows no sign of abating. For those not in the know, the term – popularised by New York Magazine’s Grub Street – indicates those small-to-medium businesses selling upmarket ‘provisions’ (charcuterie, legumes, sauces, tinned goods) with a veneer of heritage, authenticity, and (seemingly) innovative ingredients, as if they were the modern ‘general stores’ of olden days. On...
When you think about the world of financial investments, an image of woven Scouts’ patches isn’t typically the first thing that springs to mind. Other contemporary brands (like Monzo, Chip, and Plum) aim for visual simplicity over complex personality development or extended world-building. But while a rugged outdoor theme might feel incongruous in the fin-tech space, Koto has skilfully capitalised...
Florentine design studio AUGE has created a sumptuous range of packaging for Italian luxury homeware brand Ginori, which was founded in 1735 as the Manifattura di Doccia by Marquis Carlo Ginori on the grounds of his villa at Doccia. Nearly three hundred years later, the venerable brand finds itself owned by Gucci, following a merger with Società Richard (and subsequent...
There’s always something intriguing about niche, singular companies, stores and brands. When I was growing up, I distinctly remember a shop that sold only various things made out of wicker, for instance. It both intrigued and baffled me then, before I understood the concept of a ‘front’, a la (or so rumour has it) the numerous shops that once lined...
The story of Henry Steiner’s 1983 logo for HSBC....