Studio Blackburn’s branding for Ellis Butchers is unflinchingly carcass-centric, yet somehow so full of warmth

As a vegan of two decades, and a squeamish one at that, the thought alone of a “whole-carcass butcher business” makes me feel rather queasy – so it’s a testament to Studio Blackburn’s incredible skill that despite my personal nonsense, I absolutely adore this branding project. And I love it not in spite of things like the utterly unflinching, raw-flesh-laden...

Exemplary brand collabs don’t compromise: the joyful designs for Midnight Hotdog ‘dog fur mist’ by SMLXL

Back in February, we covered a project that was so delightful I still think of it often (not least thanks to its utterly ridiculous, ingenuously earwormish jingle): HotDog, with its branding by SMLXL. There was, and is, so much to love about this identity: there’s the logo formed of two dogs, one sniffing the other’s bum, reduced to its most...

If you’ve visited an off-licence, you’ve heard of Lebara – now thanks to Verve, the brand finally makes sense

Lebara. Le-ba-ra. It’s a word that’s become so familiar to many of us, sonically at least, as to have become almost part of the wallpaper. But semantically, conceptually, literally – do many of us really know what it is? If you’re anything like me or the very small sample of around five to six people who just happened to be...

Base’s brand for smalltown ’80s seafood spot Ray’s is a masterclass in earnestness done well

It’s always a joy to see an international design agency lavish the same respect, care, and craft on a relatively unknown, thoroughly local, but much-beloved brand as they would on, say, a household name product or world-renowned institution. And that’s exactly what Base Design (Kanal, 4P’s, The Huntington) – which has outposts in New York, Brussels, Melbourne, Geneva, and Saigon...

Studio Gruhl’s Global Hypercolour-esque brand identity for Rerun looks to “see what robots see”

Rerun is described as “a unified data layer for physical data that helps teams build smarter robots” which consists of two parts: Rerun SDK, “an open source library and tools for logging, storing, querying, visualising, and training on multi-rate, multimodal data”; and Rerun Hub, a “data catalogue and backend for large scale storage, access, and streaming of robotics data from...

Creative Spark’s bold, no nonsense identity for hair loss brand Leo

Leo is billed as a “hair rejuvenation brand”, founded by duo Jason Saks (who carries the rather sweet, and quite funny job title of Director of Hair Loss) and his son Joe, with the broad aim  to make hair loss feel “less isolating and less complicated”. According to Manchester-based design agency Creative Spark, which has created the superb new identity,...

Another Collective’s identity for smash burger brand Brusco deftly reinvents classic burger joint design tropes

Food trends are a funny old thing aren’t they. And just as design trends are never just about ‘aesthetics’ – the ‘what something looks like’ divorced from the world around it, food trends aren’t just about ‘edible stuff’, or ‘what things taste like’. Such movements both hold up a mirror to, predict, and feed back to us (literally, in the...

OlssønBarbieri rewrites the rulebook on ‘formality’ in its melodrama-infused Theaterbaren identity

Oslo’s Nationaltheatret (simply translated to English as National Theatre) first opened its doors more than a century ago in 1899, and has since come to not only reflect, but actively shape cultural identity in Norway. Having staged everything from more traditional Norwegian dramas from the likes of Henrik Ibsen to experimental contemporary works, the building itself is also a marriage...

Mecca Coffee by Christopher Doyle & Co.

Sydney-based Mecca Coffee started life in 2005, and has since become one of the city’s leading specialty coffee roasters, importers, and retailers. To mark the company’s 20th anniversary, Christopher Doyle & Co. (Ortto, Machine Screen Printers, New Aim), which is also based in Sydney, was brought in to evolve its brand identity across “packaging, merchandising and collateral systems,” Doyle explains....

Strangers by Auge Design

Strangers is a new confectionery brand created by Valgosa, a family company dating back to 1912 and seemingly best known as purveyors of saffron. It seems an unlikely starting point for such a boldly positioned brand – and one boasting an exquisite visual identity thanks to Milan-based Auge Design (Erbert, Ginori 1735).  According to Auge – which worked across everything...

NoomaLooma by Cotton

NoomaLooma is described as a “platform built around small moments of making”. As far as I can tell, it’s an app in its early stages (at the moment, it’s just for iPhone), and it’s launched with a brand identity created by New York studio Cotton (the design team behind the excellent identity for Eternal Research). The platform was created by...

Dataforeningen by Bielke & Yang

Dataforeningen simply translates as ‘data organisation’ from Norwegian to English, and funnily enough, that’s exactly what the organisation is. Operating nationwide across Norway serving people working in tech, it was looking for a new identity that reflected a shift in who and what it was, and its future aims. Taking on this potentially tricky brief was Oslo-based Bielke & Yang...