Case studies

A burst of energy

Canadian production company L'Éloi’s carefully curated pool of image makers is like a “burst of RGB energy,” says Bryan-K. Lamonde, Co-founder & Creative Director at Principal, a Montreal-based design studio that took charge of rebranding the company. “The talents they represent are vibrant, colourful, intense and dynamic. We wanted to amplify this intensity and make it bold, proud and powerful. At the same time, we balanced it with moments of well-crafted silence to create harmony.” It’s true. Principal’s refreshed brand for L'Éloi is impossible to ignore, demanding complete attention when the studio pulls focus to it, but it just as easily slips into the background, throwing the doors open for the company’s roster of artists and their high-impact work.

Bruno’s sleek look for Qwant

Qwant, a search engine known for its commitment to privacy, has begun integrating AI into its offering, while maintaining a firm stance of not tracking its users. Wanting to reflect these values in a refreshed visual identity, they enlisted the expertise of Bruno, a full-service agency based in Paris and San Francisco. “Unlike other search engines,” Creative Director Pierre Jeannelle tells us, “Qwant has already established a sense of ownership among users over the platform, and the design direction was crafted to align with this perception. We wanted to integrate AI as a subtle enhancement to the product, rather than as a revolutionary change.”

Come one, come all

Rogue is a newcomer in the esports scene, gaining attention with its cutting-edge gaming wearables and peripherals. Their aim is to create a brand that appeals to the diverse global gaming audience, achieved with the help of Freddie Hall, a Brooklyn-based graphic and motion designer, who has developed a striking brand strategy and visual identity centred around the concept – Home of the Misfits.

Play’s identity for OpenResearch

When Y Combinator Research – the research arm of Y Combinator, best known for its start-up accelerator – rebranded as OpenResearch, it sought an identity reflecting its mission of promoting open and collaborative research across various fields. As a nonprofit independent collective of deep thinkers, strategists and researchers who dare to ask and investigate complex, open-ended questions, such as unconditional cash in the U.S., the organisation needed an identity that would respond to the intricacies of their work without being too complicated itself.

When the San Francisco-based team of Play was brought on to create the brand, they looked to the physicality of the research process – the “multilayered paper trail of the research world, documents, sticky notes and messy bulletin boards all informed our design which blends academic rigour with an entrepreneurial spirit.

The perfect double act

For Alex Ostroff, Founder & Creative Director of Saint-Urbain, the best part of crafting the identities for The Henson – a luxe hotel in Catskills, New York – and its fine-dining restaurant, Matilda, was working with the minds behind the project. His team essentially worked with two sets of clients – on the one hand, there were renovators Danielle and Ely Franko, who knew exactly what to do when a 19th-century former boarding house run as an Airbnb hit the market. The historic property was lovingly turned into The Henson by the pair and was also fitted with a fine-dining restaurant called Matilda, the brainchild of chefs Jeremiah Stone and Fabian von Hauske Valtierra of the Michelin-starred restaurant Contra (now Bar Contra) and Wildair – both NYC hotspots of resounding fame. Stone and von Hauske Valtierra were Saint-Urbain’s second pair of clients for the project, whom Ostroff had been a fan of “for roughly 10 years, Wildair and Contra being two of my favourite restaurants in New York City,” he says.

Running and raving

Running Order, a luxury fashion and athletic brand had an interesting idea for an event – an 8k, music-filled run that seamlessly turns into a rave. When they began looking for a partner to bring this to life, they found one in Renegade, an Oakland-based running apparel shop with a 2000-strong running club. Running Order brought the idea and Renegade brought the community and space to hold the event. The novel idea needed an identity to match, so Running Order reached out to Brooklyn-based Studio Loutsis to not just create an identity, but also a world that it would live in.

Interviews

No Walls Studio

For a company called No Walls Studio, the research, brand and design agency’s work has everything to do with walls and the spaces they contain within them. The Chicago-based agency works with placemakers to create brand worlds for spaces that will resonate with the people living in and using them. For anyone coming across the work of No Walls Studio for the first time, their name is especially interesting, given how their approach isn’t bound by the limitations of what’s been done before when it comes to hospitality or real estate branding. They’re here – as they say – to work with placemakers that are eager to break the mould. With a tight core team, the agency goes all in. “We’re always trying to push the envelope on what a spatial brand can stand for and how that gets executed in everything from amenities to wayfinding to the scent in the corridors,” says Founder Jake Rynar. In this conversation, Rynar and Founder Andrew Johnson take us into the inner workings of the agency, revealing how their insightful understanding of spaces, and hence, their brands, always hinges on two things – people and culture.

5 identities we love for Parisian brands

Templates

“Our ear is to the ground on emerging ideas in every single aspect of culture.”

Jake Rynar, No Walls Studio
20th August 2024

Books

The Process Bundle

The Process series is an exclusive showcase of unused and unseen branding work from leading graphic design studios, highlighting the ideas, concepts, mockups and sketches that led to their final outcomes. This bundle includes The Process, The Process Three, The Process Four and The Process Five.

They include work from Carla Palette, Christopher Doyle, COLLINS, CoType Foundry, DesignStudio, DIA, Justified Studio, Mother Design, OMSE, Pentagram, Play SF, Two Times Elliott and many more.

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