Technology
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...
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...
Blueberry by Studio NARI
“Mind. Blown”, as someone in Gen Alpha might have said a long time ago, maybe while performing some flossing at a velocity so rapid as to be barely perceptible to the naked Millennial eye. But they probably wouldn’t say that any more, such is the rapacious speed at which all things ‘young person’ change. Gen Alpha inhabits a world so...
Norrin by Bond
What exactly is a ‘Norrin’? A cursory search reveals that it’s a word that means very different things to different people. For the Marvel-heads, Norrin Radd is an alias of the Silver Surfer character, described as “an honorable Zenn-Lavian who became the Herald of Galactus to spare his home planet Zenn-La and his beloved Shalla-Bal from Galactus’ hunger”. Of course!...
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...
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 Yeah, those ideas feel a bit outdated now.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...
Reveri by Mother
There’s no denying the proliferation of all things that the more curmudgeonly crowds might deem ‘woowoo’ over recent years. Crystals, gong baths, singing bowls, silent retreats, tarot et al were once firmly languishing on the fringes of society, and are now de rigeur among the Stoke Newington set and TikTok classes alike. This rise in self-help-led esotericism has run concurrently...
Mr Yum by Re Design
Sometimes a project comes along that doesn’t just make you think about how nice its typography is, or ponder if millennial pink is making a comeback (or indeed,, if it ever went away), or why suddenly a branded bucket hat seems to be a key facet of any company/product/concept’s ‘swag’. Sometimes, it makes you think about what ‘branding’ even means,...
Marshmallow by Ragged Edge
A marshmallow is sweet, soft, pliable. Yet they are also resilient and surprisingly strong – who among us hasn’t enjoyed watching them perform surprisingly well under a hydraulic press compared to substances that much more obviously scream ‘structural integrity’? Perhaps this soft-yet-strong dynamic is why the name works for an insurance company. Or perhaps, more simply, the name works because...
smlXL by DIA
As the adage goes, ‘Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; teach him to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime’. With this vivid paradigm of self-sufficiency in mind, we can esteem the advent of creative coding in branding, allowing design agencies to hand brands over to clients as generative tools capable of generating limitless...
Great Wrap by A Friend Of Mine
Cling-wrap, cling-film, stretch-wrap, Saran-wrap or food-wrap. Wherever you’re from and whatever you may call the ubiquitous, sticky, transparent stuff, it’s been keeping food fresh since 1949, when the first branded form of cling-wrap made from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) appeared on the market. Once held up as a mould-thwarting modern marvel, the material is now widely derided as an environmental menace....
Cohere by Pentagram
From Wes Anderson to ‘accepting the job’ and distinctly dystopian new romantic relationship models; in recent years, it’s felt like you can’t move for chat about AI – its weirdest uses, its hilarious shortcomings, and a hell of a lot of scare-mongering about it stealing our jobs. The platform that’s dominated much of the conversation is ChatGPT, an AI chatbot...