Project Send by Foreign Policy

Since their advent, kinetic and variable type have become a familiar part of the lexicon of brand design. It’s little surprise really: they offer a way to make an identity consistent yet dynamic; uniform but multifarious; endlessly flexible with countless opportunities to modify mood, tone, and messaging. But few projects seem to use kinetic type as a way to visually...

Philadelphia Art Museum by Gretel

Creating museum and gallery identities must be both a dream brief and an intimidating prospect for brand designers; a poisoned chalice of sorts. We hear the same challenges time and again when agencies discuss such projects: creating a brand that’s both strong and ownable but which lets the artefacts/art take centre stage; an identity that takes an institution into the...

Fhirst by Mother Design

We’ve arrived at a point where the idea of ‘y2k’ as an aesthetic has stretched beyond ‘trend’ or ‘cycle’ and morphed into an entity almost entirely devoid of the temporal placemarker its name suggests. Having been repeated ad nauseum, ‘y2k’ is no longer about a visual/cultural moment and/or collection of moments around 25 years back. Instead, it’s become a Burroughs...

IAAC by Mucho

The IAAC (Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia) is an organisation which boasts a remit that feels both nigh-on impossibly wide but also hyperspecific. Based in Barcelona and founded in 2001 as a hub for innovation in architecture and design, IAAC describes itself as ‘a platform for producing knowledge to shape the future of cities, buildings and society’. The long...

Hank’s Bagelry by Studio Ongarato

Sometimes, a brand identity can be deeply strategic, have a rich heritage or an involving narrative. Other times, it can be simply eye catching and cool. Suites of custom designed icons, art directed photography, tone of voice, motion behaviours, programmatic graphic elements and bespoke in-house content generating tools…. not every brand needs these. They’re colours to paint with. I call...

Pinky Swear by The Working Assembly

I could be totally wrong, but it really does look like New York-based branding agency The Working Assembly had a lot of fun working on the branding for Pinky Swear. A restaurant and cocktail lounge on Chrystie St on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Pinky Swear opened earlier this year as a fascinating concept unlike anything we’ve really encountered before: yes,...

Monica Rich Kosann by Here

There’s been a fair bit of chatter in recent times in the brand design world about the ‘new codes of luxury’ – how today’s hip young well-to-dos are eschewing the signifiers of yesteryear (ostentation, gold, bling, anything remotely showy) for a more understated aesthetic. Being fabulously rich today, then, is perhaps a little like the whole ‘no makeup’ thing: anyone...

Phoenix Organics by Marx Design

It’s a tale as old as time: a once beloved brand – a pioneering brand even, the first of its kind or category – that gets rather lost over the years, muddled in a confusion of sub-brands and spin-offs. Such brands often fall victim to a sort of design by committee – and rarely intentionally: as companies grow and expand...

Wolfe Bros Cellos by OurCreative

The likes of Strawberry & Lime Kopparberg and Old Mout Cider (pronounced, either ‘moot’, or ‘mowt’, few know, few care coz that cute little kiwi bird is so distracting) are both, let’s face it, the semi-grown up, pretty acceptable face of alcopops: people order them at very normal (even gastro!) pubs and no one bats an eyelid – the same...

12 by Base Design

If New York really is the city that never sleeps, that’s in no small part thanks to coffee – and now, increasingly, a newer entrant to the socially acceptable uppers scene, matcha. Capitalising on the growing interest in the sludgy green pick-me-up is 12, a new-ish matcha-centric café and retail store that opened last year in Manhattan’s NoHo area. Sited...

Big Cartel by How&How

Big Cartel launched in 2005 as a low-cost, easily customisable ecommerce platform specifically aimed at artists and other creatives. In the two decades since, the platform has quietly revolutionised what it is to be an independent maker,  powering more than $2.5 billion in sales from ceramicists, jewellery designers, illustrators, and the occasional medieval tapestry revivalist. But as the marketplace for,...

Sigma by Stockholm Design Lab

You could argue that there’s a fair few similarities in terms of Japan and Sweden’s approach to design, and the aesthetics of life more generally. Both are known often for a specific kind of minimalism – a tastefulness that eschews fluff, luxuriates in crisp whites and keeps its edges, everything in its right place, rules and order and form following...