Studio Missive 32: The design inspiration behind a stylescape
Hi friends,
Happy Friday! Big week. Get your favourite beverage. It’s 5 o’clock somewhere (unless it’s, like, 9am wherever you are. In that case, hold off tiger).
What’s inspiring you?
A lot of links to share this week. I went on a bit of a branding binge, so to speak, and ended up with a lot of great stuff. Instead of breaking it down as a numbered list, I thought I’d make this a little easier to read and group it by headings.
Zoo branding
I revisited the branding for Chester Zoo by How&How, San Diego Zoo’s identity by Pentagram, Oregon Zoo’s branding by Studio DAD, and the identity for Houston Zoo by Design By Principle. There’s a lot of great work in this category.
And if you’re willing to dip into history: Pentagram borrowed liberally from the 1975 National Zoo brand identity by Lancy Wyman.
Museum branding
Check out the great work on the Natural History Museum by Pentagram. Wow! I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Leo & Burnett’s rebranding of the Royal Ontario Museum, shamelessly (and brilliantly) pilfered a little by the work Pentagram did for the Library of Congress. (Lots of Pentagram work in here. They’re the best.)
I’m fascinated by how museums all end up sharing similar vibes. It’s all grotesque sans-serifs and grayscale aesthetics. As a society, we’ve decided that Helvetica is the best way to dress up a sixteenth century piece of art.
But not every museum has to be that way. For a less all-caps-grotesque direction, check out Nature Museum by Span.
Aquarium branding
First of all, you’re basically branding water. Tough gig. Not as tough as branding something like Aquafina, but still: not easy. The brand work that Doe Anderson did for Georgia Aquarium looks great. This is the last time I’ll bring up Pentagram (ok, second last), but their work on the Monterey Bay Aquarium makes me feel like I need to find a new career; it’s incredible stuff. (I am a huge fan of the subtle way they bring it all together in the aquarium’s Shoreline magazine.)
Church branding
Check out the Hackney Church brand identity by Omse. An extremely smart way to brand a very interesting church.
Booze branding
I discovered Chad Michael this week and am blown away by the vibes he bring to alcohol designs. Check out his work on Oxson Bourbon Whiskey, Slane Irish Whiskey, Hywilde Liquers, and Gold Bar Whiskey.
Our local booze scene has a sort of Pacific Northwest vibe to it, possibly because Hamilton is a steel town. I was admiring Collective Arts this week and looking for other beers with a similar vibe. I liked the designs for Inbound Brewing by Michael Byzewski, the work Dessein did for Beerland Brewing, the 2012 Creemore designs by Jump, and the Apprch and Austin Eastciders designs by Aaron Draplin. Also, Codo Design writes a very helpful annual review of the beer design trends scene.
Departed Spirits by Marx Design knocked my socks off. A completely different take on this sort of branding and product design. (My favourite was the vodka label they designed, which simply reads: “Very good vodka. So good that it doesn’t taste like vodka.”)
Simple and straightforward branding
The Departed Spirits brand is a great transition into another sort of branding that I don’t have a great name for. If Ron Swanson’s commercial for Very Good Building & Development Co were a real thing, it would qualify. It’s simple, straightforward branding that tells you exactly what you’re getting.
I thought of Ron Swanson immediately when I saw Pentagram’s work on Payz, which confidently uses Graphik as its typeface and boldly and simply proclaims, in all lower-case and with all the confidence in the world: “We are a bank.” And not a wonder Payz is so confident, when their claim is actually quite easily proven. (I have often been tempted to reframe Wildfire Studios as simply “a very good design studio,” but I don’t want to argue with anybody.)
I was reminded of Canada’s rich history with this exact kind of branding. If you live outside of Canada, you might make jokes like this, but in Canada, we have No Name (last rebranded by Gopika). A black and yellow bumblebee aesthetic that proudly states: “This is a frozen pizza. This is chocolate ice cream. This is tomato sauce.” And you need no further explanation.
If you’re not from Canada and you’ve taken a look at that, you are either planning to move here or you’re completely stupefied, because those are the only two possible reactions. But Canada has a rich history of simple, colourful design. I think it’s because so much of our lives is spent in winter, and we never see the sun.
Lest you think that No Name is alone in its irreverance, we also have No Frills, last rebranded by Landini & Associates. Yes, that’s a supermarket draped almost entirely in black and yellow. (The same parent company owns No Frills and No Name, for what that’s worth, and all these colours date back to 1978.)
What are you working on?
This week, I’ve been designing a CMS, working on a product strategy for a nonprofit, and looking for design references for the MHBC stylescapes. Since both the CMS and the product strategy are private at the moment, I thought I would share the cool stuff I’d found for MHBC this week with you.
Originally, I’d written a few thousand words about how I went about looking for this material, why I chose the sources I did, and why I do all this work when I start thinking about stylescapes, as well as the right way and wrong way to do it. But once you’ve written a novella, it’s time to admit you’ve exceeded the boundaries of a weekly blog post update. When this project comes to a close, I have a series of videos planned breaking down the behind the scenes at every step. One of those videos will outline finding design references, what a stylescape should do, and why it’s not a moodboard (unless you’re doing it wrong) in detail, so if you need even more information, keep an eye out for that.
Until next week,
Nathan