Case studies

Make money move

Paris-based fintech startup Aria, known for its mission to “make money move,” has unveiled a bold brand identity by London-based creative agency Together. Specialising in fast, seamless B2B payments, financing, and risk protection, Aria’s identity aims to capture the fluidity and ease that define its product.

Miles ahead

At the heart of AG1 (formerly Athletic Greens), a brand synonymous with health and wellness, lies a mission to empower people to take control of their health. Since its inception in 2010, AG1 has been dedicated to providing foundational nutrition through its continually evolving formula for its supplement. In 2023, AG1 took another step forward by sharpening its brand identity, enlisting LA and San Francisco-based design and marketing agency The New Company to lead the transformation.

A cross-cultural culinary feast

L’altro Frenchie – a fresh venture from Michelin-starred chef Grégory Marchand – is a time-travelling, globe-trotting gastronomic experience that marries 1950s New York’s Italian cuisine with British influences, all served up in 2024 Paris. To launch the eatery, Bordeaux-based branding studio Abmo crafted a visual narrative that captures the essence of L’altro Frenchie – a place where every meal is a celebration of cross-cultural creativity. Dez Gusta, Abmo’s Co-founder & Creative Director, explains the challenge – “We aimed to create an identity that’s as generous, twisted and elegant as the cuisine itself.”

Relocating abroad as a creative

Interviews

Relative Design

Relative Design, founded by Yaxu Han and Lingfeng Liu, is a studio unafraid to push boundaries, embrace new technologies, and most importantly, put the human element at the forefront of their creative endeavours. Based in China, the duo bring together a wealth of experience from their time in Beijing and New York, creating a studio that embraces diversity, inclusivity and human-centred design. Alongside discussing their portfolio – an impressive range of visual identities, digital platforms and brand worlds – we explore the origins of Relative Design and how Han and Liu’s complementary skills led to the formation of their studio. The pair also unpack their views on technological innovations like AI, their approach to balancing creativity with client expectations, and how they infuse fun into their design process.

Insight

How to start a restaurant and then build an entire brand world around it: we take lessons from BAO

Looking back at the journey of BAO can be a wellspring of inspiration, brimming with nuggets of knowledge about not just starting and running a business, but also designing one. The restaurant, which first opened as a stall in Netil Market in 2013, has gone on to not just sell a delectable selection of baos over the years, but also become a crowd favourite, quickly launching a confetti of outlets across London. Started by husband and wife artist duo Shing Tat Chung and Erchen Chang, along with Shing’s sister Wai Ting Chung, BAO owes a chunk of its success to its humorous, delightful and now iconic identity of a double-chined, hunched-back ‘Lonely Man’ inhaling a BAO bun, that led to an extensive exercise of worldbuilding. As the restaurant launches its freshest outlet – BAO City – we sit down for a chat with Co-founder & Creative Director Erchen Chang, who takes us through the evolution of the restaurant’s design language, which began with a singular logo that was translated into an entire world of storytelling, touching everything BAO does and makes.

Typeface

Booton

In a world saturated with sans serifs, Displaay’s uniwidth typeface Booton sets itself apart by seamlessly blending flexibility, consistency, clarity and style – making it a go-to typeface for the digital age. The brainchild of Type Designer Daniel Quisek, Booton was crafted with the modern designer’s needs in mind.

Lock

After more than two years in development, CoType Foundry has unveiled Lock, its first superfamily that blends precision with flexibility. Designed by Founder Mark Bloom and Lead Font Developer Diana Ovezea, Lock offers four distinct subfamilies – Serif, Serif Stencil, Sans, and Sans Stencil – each featuring six weights, glyph alternates, arrows, and other typographic treats.

Mockups

“We are looking forward to the development of AI and hope that one day we can feed a client’s brief into our studio’s AI workflow.”

Yaxu Han, Relative Design
2nd September 2024

Books

Letterform Variations

From the mind of graphic designer Nigel Cottier, Letterform Variations is an ongoing study into letterform construction using basic grid and shape-based systems; exploring their potential to generate vast amounts of varying alphabetical outcomes.

Cottier’s modular systems are built within expansive design spaces that facilitate the production of an almost infinite range of outputs, but what distinguishes them is the considered choices he makes subsequently – categorising and editing his results as competent and handsome representations of alphabetic forms.

Across its 692 pages, this book contains 19,840 of the letters Cottier has created so far – all from one simple framework.

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