Wedge’s Bastét toothpaste brand design makes absolutely no sense for its category – and perhaps that’s what makes it so utterly gorgeous

“Nano-hydroxyapatite” isn’t exactly memorable – it takes a few tries to even attempt to figure out how to say it, and I’d wager that there aren’t too many people who can tell you what on earth it is, beyond “some sort of chemical, probably?” One thing that is memorable, however, is the brand identity for Bastét – a new oral...

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Packaging: Design That Stirs

Packaging expert Lisa Cain reviews A Friend Of Mine’s work for The Cocktail Cabinet’s recipe card packs for home bars and cocktail lovers....

Mother Design gives psychic platform Keen a 90s New Age sensibility for the digital age – and it works beautifully

Arguably, we’re approaching a time that could be seen to be ‘post-woo-woo’ – as in, those things that have long been dismissed as daft; the preserve of silly women and charlatans and people whose lives revolve around cats and an unmistakable whiff of Nag Champa – are becoming increasingly acceptable. With the concept of ‘wellness’ now well and truly established...

Studio South merges rigour and ridiculousness in the best way possible in its superb identity for noodle joint Oodles

There’s so much to love about this identity – not least that it manages to make a noodle joint look like a perennially hip skate brand (yes, I am obviously talking about Supreme – all no-nonsense stocky black lettering on postbox red backgrounds). The identity in question is that for the delectably named Oodles – more on that moniker shortly...

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Packaging: Oral Care Shelves…Where Good Design Usually Goes To Die

Packaging expert Lisa Cain shares her opinion on oral hygiene brand Smart Life...

Mucca makes New York supermarket company Fairway’s everyday essentials anything but basic

Founded in 1933, Fairway Market is an independent regional supermarket chain with stores across New York. The grocery retailer sells food and household goods, and over the past eight decades or so has built its reputation on an unusually broad selection of hard-to-find products and a distinctly New York character. As well as selling a number of different brands, Fairway...

‘I am the walrus’: Anatomy’s charming new identity for the Horniman Museum

I struggle to think of a subculture I detest quite as viscerally and deeply as steampunks: not only is it aesthetically quite hideous, I just don’t really get it – it’s the past! But the future! But very dusty and everyone’s a creep! Inexplicably wearing goggles! It all smacks of a man in the corner of your front room at...

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Packaging: Packaging’s Dirtiest Job

Packaging expert Lisa Cain shares her opinion on brand Michu’s cat litter range....

Thonik’s identity for Orkest Phion gives the symphony orchestra a brand that’s as ever-changing and itinerant as its programme

Orkest Phion – or Phion Symphony Orchestra in English – is a Dutch travelling symphony orchestra that was formed in 2019 through the merger of the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra and Het Gelders Orkest. Based in the eastern Netherlands, it operates across the provinces of Gelderland and Overijssel, performing in different cities and venues rather than from a single permanent concert...

Mouthwash Studio’s identity for eyewear brand Bonnie Clyde might be confusing, and infuriatingly historically inaccurate – but it’s ultimately rather lovely

This is an identity that’s not very easy to instantly get your head around – arguably, at a glance, it’s downright confusing. Sometimes it comes on strong all antiquey – like the branding equivalent of once-beloved UK high-street also-ran Past Times – at others, it’s all Trewley Precious lash brand partnership, all hearts and dusky pink and half-arsed girly girly...

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Packaging: Can Europe Become a Brand?

Packaging expert Lisa Cain shares her opinion on the idea of a ‘Made in Europe’ designation for products produced in Europe....

Studio Blackburn’s new identity for folding bike icon Brompton cements the brand’s place in British engineering heritage

Pretty much the one and only memorable brand name when it comes to bikes you can fold up and carry around, Brompton – as its thoroughly British name might suggest – was founded in England in 1975 by engineer Andrew Ritchie, who developed the first prototype in his West London flat. The original Brompton bike design specifically looked to tackle...

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Packaging: Design Scoop

Packaging expert Lisa Cain shares her opinion on Bravo’s branding for gelato brand Sweet Cheeks....

Perky Bros puts restrained Southern hospitality before shouty branding in its identity for Tennessee resort Southall

Branding parlance often deifies qualities like ‘boldness’ – being ‘brave’, ‘zigging when others zag’, ‘disruption,’ and so on and so forth. Some projects, however, demand and deserve the absolute opposite; the sign of a good designer, perhaps, is to intuitively know which one is which. This is one such project. Southall is resort set across 325 acres just outside Franklin,...

Porto Rocha creates bold yet sensitive new identity for Brazilian art gallery Almeida & Dale

Founded in São Paulo in 1998, Almeida & Dale is a Brazilian art gallery specialising in modern and contemporary art. Over the past 20 years or so, across its three galleries in Brazil it has developed a programme of exhibitions, publications and art fairs, representing artists and estates  spanning different periods and movements in Brazilian art – including Lygia Clark,...

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Packaging: Packaging the Essence of Heritage

Packaging expert Lisa Cain shares her opinion on Pentagram’s packaging for Liberty fragrance brand LBTY....

Vans didn’t need reinventing – Accept & Proceed’s new brand identity understands that

I love my Vans almost literally to death: the little black, three-hole plimsolls are so well-loved that there are holes in both big toes, and on the right side, actual horizontal tears across the top. They’re sun-bleached to the point of almost unrecognition, holey as hell, ripped up and yet still, so unbelievably comfortable that I can’t bear to part...

All Purpose ditches wine clichés in its lurid new identity for natural wine importer Ancestrel

Based in leafy yummy-mummyish south London enclave Forest Hill, Ancestrel (yes that’s a deliberate misspelling) is a wine shop and so much more – it’s proudly the first company in the UK to import natural wine. Having started life in 2016, Ancestrel has spent the decade since making a name for itself as a renowned importer, wholesaler, and retailer of...

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Packaging: When Less Screams More

Packaging expert Lisa Cain shares her opinion on Han Goa’s packaging concept for ‘Nice Cream’...

Pentagram nails controlled chaos in its identity for Manhattan “shophouse” style Thai restaurant LenLen

It’s not easy to make an identity look genuinely effortless – more often than not, the very intention to do so renders the result looking the exact opposite. And nothing, no one, ever wants to be levelled with the accusation of appearing to be ‘trying too hard’. However, Pentagram New York’s partner Andrea Trabucco-Campos and team has succeeded in that...

Coca-Cola’s new identity by JKR proves that sometimes the smartest rebrand is barely a rebrand at all

It’s hard to think of a bigger name client than Coca-Cola: the brand is so huge that it’s become a shorthand for anything meaning ‘global mega-corp’. Its reach is so vast, its history so firmly cemented in culture that it practically owns a certain combination of red and white; a specific sort of alliterative script serif type. Even its bottle...

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Packaging: Don’t Be the Sad Snack

Packaging expert Lisa Cain shares her opinion on the brand identity for vegan meat brand Juicy Marbles designed by Ljudje....

20(Something) borrows from museum-modernity as much as tech in its new identity for civic software platform Open Point

I’ve no idea what this trend is called, or indeed if it even has a name, but I’m seeing it around a hell of a lot lately: t-shirts (usually very crisp, almost box-fresh-clean, and white) with a tonne of text emblazoned across the back. It doesn’t seem to matter at all what the text says, to means, but there’s a...

Koto gives programmer forum Stack Overflow a reason to exist in the age of AI

Since starting life in 2008, Stack Overflow has functioned as a website/platform/forum that soon became a sort of internet go-to as a shared notebook or tool guide for programmers: somewhere they can ask questions, answer them, and have them answered by other actual real life people who’ve probably been there and done that, and want to impart the wisdom they’ve...