In a spin
Reviewed by Emily Gosling
It’s all well and good for a design agency to make some wild, boundary-pushing, all-singing all-dancing work for things like Gen Z healthcare products; or ‘top shelf’ spirits; or craft beer. But most client projects aren’t going to be the sort of thing that merits bright orange and typography that dances around the boundaries of legibility. And arguably, it’s those less ‘showy’ projects that require the most creatively dextrous approaches.
Among the things that top the list of ‘not all that interesting’ are insurance and drainage; while ‘low-carbon home energy hardware’ has the double whammy of not only sounding slightly boring and rather complex, but reminding us of the doom of climate crisis, and potentially inducing our own anxieties about not ‘doing our bit’ as much as we could – be that through financial constraints, a lack of time and energy to contemplate things like boilers, or because we don’t really understand what we could do differently, or how.
Hometree is a brand that specialises in all of the above, making it something of a double-edged sword for design agency How&How, which recently worked on its new brand identity…..
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Pursuit
Gander
‘What success really looks like’ is a great set up for Pursuit, a social enterprise that delivers transformation through training to wherever it’s needed most. A looping arrow designed by Gander captures the never-straightforward route to success (however you choose to define it). That this then forms a ‘P’ is a lovely synergy of idea and type. It’s dynamic and distinct, and forms part of a larger visual identity of directions.
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Better with Bata
The story of Design Research Unit's 1969 logo for Czechoslovakian shoe manufacture and retailer Bata written by Rich Baird.
Despite having its 1960s headquarters in the Canadian city of Toronto, the shoe manufacturer, distributer and retailer Bata was founded in Zlin, Czechoslovakia by Tomáš Baťa, a 9th generation shoemaker.
By 1969, 75 years after its founding, the Bata Shoe Organization was holding 98 Bata companies in 89 countries over seeing 90 factories, 5,000 stores and 90,000 employees. During this period of growth Bata maintained a strong focus on ‘producing and selling the best quality footwear at the most economical prices’. This had found it warmly welcomed in many countries.
Such growth and scale presented challenges around the brand’s image, the consistency of its application, flexibility within evolving retail spaces, and distinctiveness within a competitive industry…
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Now on Brand Archive:
Deliveroo by Design Studio
Brand Archive is a new research tool from the team behind BP&O. Discover a long history of corporate identity design, from the 1960s to present day. Using our custom built filter, discover individual assets from signage, to packaging to liveries, drawn from over 700 brands.
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