A plate full
Reviewed by Emily Gosling
Like many a geriatric millennial, a lot of my childhood was joyfully spent in front of the telly absorbing cultural pillars like Zig and Zag, Stoppit and Tidyup, and, of course, Wales’ finest export after Charlotte Church, Fireman Sam.
Alongside the titular Sam, the show starred icons including ‘Naughty’ Norman Price (fun fact – my dad once mended the boiler of the woman who voiced his mother) and the indefatigable Italian Nonna of Pontypandy, Bella Lasagne. Obviously, she was called Bella Lasagne.
But why am I harping on about this? Thanks to Gustini – a brand name that feels charmingly not-quite-Italian. It sounds like a fictional hapless Florentine magician: ‘the Great Gustini’, who never quite manages to find a rabbit in his hat, or something. In short, it’s Italian-adjacent, but ultimately not hiding the fact its roots lie elsewhere.
Gustini is, in fact, German, and was founded in 2008 by Jens Depenau as an online marketplace selling selected Italian products from small, local manufacturers. The company was looking to rebrand after 15 years in business, and it’s perhaps not hard to understand why, when you see the previous identity…
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Palisades Parks Conservancy
Order
The Palisades Parks Conservancy provides programming and assistance to over 25 parks and historic sites across New York and New Jersey. To better their mission to preserve, protect, and support the parks Order updated their identity, which included a new logo. A pitch pine–a hearty and resilient tree native to the Parks region–is abstracted and given a formal geometry, reflecting the basic proportions of the large bottom-heavy canopy but also the lattice shape of its beginnings as a pine cone. The connection made ‘from seed to mature tree’ is a lovely little visual gesture. As a logo, its counter spacing and balance of form and idea lends it well to both scalability and memorability.
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Now on Brand Archive:
Oxford Properties by Lance Wyman, 1974
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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Thank you for subscribing to the BP&O Newsletter. If you’re interested in other design-related resources and tools, also check out these from the same team:
Brand Archive – Research tool for brand designers.
LogoArchive Website – Searchable modernist logo archive & research tool.
Logo Histories – Stories behind great historical logos.
LogoArchive Shop – Vintage design books & LogoArchive Zines.