HotDog by SMLXL
From the moment I turned the sound up (as per instructions) on the ‘about’ page of the HotDog website, safe to say I was obsessed with this brand and its branding. It’s laugh out loud hilarious – I truly loled, as did the person I was sharing a room with, and as I’m sure anyone within eye- or ear-shot would...
Makan by Foreign Policy
The chintzy rose; the bright but slightly dusky pink; the multifarious wordmarks; the apparently haphazard, painterly decorative flourishes; an approach to letter sizing that’s borderline unhinged – the branding for Makan has the potential to be all kinds of terrible. Instead, it’s absolutely the opposite, thanks to the deft hands at Foreign Policy (Park Bench Deli, Project Send, Critical Mass)....
BP&O Voices
Packaging:
Space Craft
A guest article written by packaging expert Lisa Cain. BP&O Voices presents the opinions of industry experts on a wide range of topics....
Storrd by Among Equals
London is awash with convenience stores – from the acrid yellow signage of Nisa to the misleadingly named ubiquity of Costcutter to the countless independents named things like Ben’s, despite the fact they have nothing to do with anybody called Ben. Such shops – reliably there at most times of day, reliably overpriced (hence the convenience I suppose, like an...
3TEMP by Studio NARI
If you had to guess what 3TEMP is and does, it’s hard to imagine many people would come up with the right answer: with no prior knowledge of the company, it sounds like the sort of thing a half-arsed episode of Black Mirror could come up with – some kind of temping agency but everyone is actually AI, or perhaps...
BP&O Voices
Packaging:
Botanical, But Make It Bold
A guest article written by packaging expert Lisa Cain. BP&O Voices presents the opinions of industry experts on a wide range of topics....
Kanal by Base Design
Kanal is a museum-to-be with an admirable yet bold raison d’être that defies much of what we think we know about the nature of highbrow cultural sites: not a “finished institution, but a cultural project in motion,” as its general director Yves Goldstein puts it. Based in Brussels, Kanal will – somewhat surprisingly – become the city’s only museum of...
Eat Dirt by Cachete Jack and Marta Veludo Studio
The best branding and packaging projects – or at least the ones that most excite this slightly jaded old design hack – are those that not only take a category and do something genuinely innovative within it, but the ones that rethink structure as much as style. The identity for Eat Dirt does all that and more, and so safe...
BP&O Voices
Packaging:
Designing For Things You Can’t See
A guest article written by packaging expert Lisa Cain. BP&O Voices presents the opinions of industry experts on a wide range of topics....
Xochi by Kinoto Studio
Another day, another soft drink with a wild new angle: in the last year or so we’ve undoubtedly seen some impressive entrances to the category, from the shouty Yaté yerba maté to ‘braincare beverage’ Rolus to London-brewed water kefir brand Agua de Madre, to the unhinged Y2K lunacy of Fhirst. Now, meet Xochi, a prebiotic agave soda made with 100%...
Fello by Bold Scandinavia
When it comes to brand design, of all the sectors, mobile networks seem to play it pretty safe: functional, practical, all in all, pretty dry – or at the very least, unadventurous. Some are better than others, of course: I for one think that Giff Gaff’s wordmark is actually alright – I’m far from opposed to the quirk in joining...
BP&O Voices
Packaging:
Type Goes Rogue
A guest article written by packaging expert Lisa Cain. BP&O Voices presents the opinions of industry experts on a wide range of topics....
Kunsthalle Basel by Porto Rocha
Basel is a fascinating place – beautiful but unassuming, relatively small but the undisputed capital of the contemporary art world. Not only is it the host of – as you’d guess from the name – Art Basel, the Art Fair that arguably forms the pinnacle of the global art market calendar, but it also has one of the highest densities...
BP&O Voices
Jobs:
Mid-weight Designer, Pentagram, London
Pentagram partners Luke Powell and Jody Hudson-Powell are looking for a Mid-weight brand and systems designer to join them in the London studio....
Atlético Dallas by Moniker
Dallas connotes many things: cowboys! (the gun-slingin’, yeehawin’ type ones on horseback); cowboys! (the cheerleading ones of ‘that show on Netflix’ fame); cowboys! (the American football team). In short, for people like me who’ve never been to Dallas, nor indeed any of Texas, and who know next to nothing about sport, Dallas = cowboys, and perhaps little else. But even...
BP&O Voices
Packaging:
Green’s The New Gold
A guest article written by packaging expert Lisa Cain. BP&O Voices presents the opinions of industry experts on a wide range of topics....
The Huntington by Base Design
There’s a particular kind of challenge that crops up again and again in cultural branding – not obscurity exactly, but partial recognition. The sort where an institution is famous for one thing, quietly exceptional at several others, and yet rarely understood as a coherent whole. The Huntington, a century-old cultural and research institution in Southern California, sits squarely in that...
BP&O Voices
Packaging:
Perfect Isn’t Always Persuasive
A guest article written by packaging expert Lisa Cain. BP&O Voices presents the opinions of industry experts on a wide range of topics....
So Energy by Studio Blackburn
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s all well and good making some striking, retina-toastingly fluoro, brave as hell design work for, say, a kombucha startup or CBD lube or a record sleeve or an art book. These things are by dint of their very existence, context, and audience, already sort of cool. But the real creative...
BP&O Voices
Jobs:
Design Director, Josephmark, Brisbane
Josephmark is looking for a Design Director to join their Brisbane studio. This is remote-friendly opportunity at a digital studio that designs, builds, and launches brands, products, and companies that shape the future....
Yoshi by Saint-Urbain
Early days for sure, but this is hands down the best brand identity design I’ve seen this year – kudos to Saint-Urbain for once again putting a project out into the world that’s not only an absolute joy to look at, but which shows a razor-sharp nous for branding that’s both searingly zeitgeist and resolutely, timelessly future-facing. Said project is...
Cocolab by Wedge
It’s pretty hard to get excited about dental floss. Oral care, for the most part, lives firmly in the realm of obligation rather than desire, a twice-daily chore that sits somewhere between setting your alarm and taking the bins out. It’s precisely this emotional dead zone that Cocolab (formerly Cocofloss) set out to disrupt when it was founded in California...
BP&O Voices
Jobs:
Senior Designer, Moniker, San Francisco
Moniker is looking for a Senior Designer 100% focused on visual identity work: concepting and designing brand systems that can scale across complex organisations, digital products, and real-world environments. This role is hands-on, highly collaborative, and ideal for someone who is as comfortable defining a core visual idea as they are building out the details of a system so it...
4P’s by Base Saigon
What with it being the season to be jolly and all that, it feels almost contrarian to not be as positive as I usually am in covering projects for BP&O – after all, it’s about showcasing the very best in brand design and packaging. But in the spirit of the ‘O’ for ‘Opinion’, it’s tricky to be as nigh-on-unanimously gushing...