T-shirt Design
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...
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 Yeah, those ideas feel a bit outdated now.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...
Fuku by Red Antler
Fuku (no sniggering at the back please) is a ‘fine brining establishment’ – i.e. some sort of eatery, you can safely assume – specialising in a specific type of chicken ‘sando’, or in normal language, ‘sandwich’. According to Red Antler, the Brooklyn based design agency behind Fuku’s branding, ‘the Fuku sando first hit the scene as a secret menu item...
Bettr by Anak
Between the late 2000s and the early 2010s, the coffee industry turned its attention to ‘craft’, elevating the beverage to a gourmet offering. When it came to brand storytelling, flavour notes, provenance and sustainability became key components. These features came to define what’s now known as ‘third-wave coffee’, which pre-dates the gamified science-infused ‘fourth-wave coffee’ movement in terms of textures...
Dark Arts Coffee by NOT Wieden+Kennedy
If a brand that fuses memes, hot takes, occultism, and coffee is going to succeed anywhere, it’s probably in east London. Dark Arts Coffee started out in 2014 in a Homerton railway arch, and managed to corner that distinct subgenre of goth/metal/biker-ish aesthetics which opts for craft ale over snakebite; Hackney over Camden; self-care over self-destruction. Where the old guard,...
Compound by DesignStudio
What does ‘healthcare’ look like today, especially when we’re increasingly talking about preventative treatment? For Parsley Health and GlycanAge, which promote functional medicine, it’s serene – all blush pink, forest green and rounded corners; for Modern Age, which focuses on longevity, it’s more clinical, with high-resolution botanical imagery and classical icons; Ezra, which offers full-body MRIs as cancer prevention, goes...
Wholy Greens by Control Studio
Wholy Greens is a B-Corp certified Dutch food brand dedicated to transforming the way people perceive and enjoy vegetables. Its mission is to create a mindset shift from ‘having to eat veggies’ to ‘genuinely loving veggies’ – and it uses pasta as its primary vehicle. It’s a smart set up, not least because, frankly, what experiences aren’t more enjoyable when...
Dirty Vegan by Jens Nilsson
Having been a vegan for almost 20 years now, various tropes have come and gone. In the early days, for the health conscious it was pretty much all about brown paper packaged Holland and Barrett goods, and references to the Young Ones cooking lentils. For the not so health conscious (hello!) it was ketchup sandwiches. Gradually the Quorn contingent came...
The Gospel by DDMMYY
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...
Frank Penny by Bedow
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...
Quality Experience (QX) by &Walsh
Even the most fleeting scan through &Walsh’s portfolio makes it wholly unsurprising how Jessica Walsh’s semi-eponymous studio has achieved such a brilliant reputation. While Walsh herself has garnered countless design press column inches – as partner at Sagmeister & Walsh; one half of the 40 Days of Dating project; a creative conference regular; and an advocate for women in design...
Pilo by 5.5
Youth hostels aren’t exactly associated with luxury – nor great branding. For the most part, they’re deemed the cheap and cheerful option; a trip where home comforts are sacrificed for socially minded living, affordability, and a more adventurous sensibility than the average Travelodge. They’re the sorts of places where creaky bunk beds, shower queues, pillows so thin they’re barely more...