Case studies

Elegance and extravagance

Audo Copenhagen, launched in June 2023, is a Danish design powerhouse and furniture atelier born from the merger of MENU and By Lassen with The Audo. Rooted in a century of Nordic design history, they blend timeless aesthetics with modern international perspectives and a deep-rooted commitment to creative collaboration. To aid in the branding process, they approached Copenhagen-based practice Studio C, who crafted a single, unified voice and visual identity for the new chapter of their business – one that honours the company’s history and recounts the brand’s unique story.

Seeing the unseen

CloudBees is a DevOps software company that provides tools that help developers streamline the process of creating software from idea to production. Supporting over 10 million developers and 500+ enterprise clients, they specialise in bridging traditional on-premises systems with cloud-native technologies, facilitating enterprise cloud transformation.

It’s a goal!

FC St. Pauli, the German football club celebrated for its unconventional ethos both on and off the pitch, has introduced a custom typeface, FC Sans Pauli, developed by Hamburg-based design studio Karl Anders. This typeface replaces the previously used Futura and reflects the club’s distinctive identity and defiant attitude.

Relocating abroad, part two

Interviews

Studio Gruhl

Studio Gruhl has its feet firmly planted in the present moment. The studio, which began in the bedroom of Founder Malte Gruhl, knows exactly what it wants to do – create brands that are meant to live and breathe in a digital world. This pointed intention, though, was something that brewed gently over the past few years, until Gruhl knew that this had to be reflected in the studio’s own identity. So, along with his team, set out to re-evaluate their approach, which resulted in a new mission, identity and website. To dig a bit deeper, we spoke to Gruhl about their new look, and how it signals a new chapter for the studio that’s poised to build the agile, adaptive brands of tomorrow.

Date of Birth

Date of Birth, the Melbourne-based branding and design agency, knows what makes a product stand out on shelves and what helps it linger in consumers’ minds. The practice has been bringing its keen insight to its projects, leaning towards what the team calls ‘consumer branding.’ Since the agency was set up in 2015, it has found a voice in the retail and product space, carving distinctive paths for brands in Australia and beyond.

Branding for consumer products – which can be an aggressive space – poses unique challenges, such as helping a product shine amongst a crowd of competitors. It can also be rife with pitfalls, such as brands mimicking the visual formula of a successful contemporary, or more worryingly, becoming very copyable themselves. Date of Birth’s experience helps them see past and beyond such faux pas, and craft not just a look for a new product or idea, but an entire experience around it that goes “beyond a transaction,” says Founder & Chief Creative Officer John Mastro. As we connect with Mastro looking to get a glimpse of the inner workings of the studio, he tells us about being in the “memory business” and reveals their secret to creating easy-to-ID brands that are hard to forget.

Mockups

“I try hard to stay deliberately small right now. It makes collaboration easier.”

Malte Gruhl, Studio Gruhl
14th October 2023

Books

The Process Five – Digital Edition

The Process Five is an exclusive showcase of unused and unseen branding work from ten world-leading graphic design studios, highlighting the ideas, concepts, mockups and sketches that led to their final outcomes. Coming in at 344 pages, it is the chunkiest and most comprehensive volume in the series yet with 571 process works included. It features never seen before insights and inspiration from projects by Pentagram, Play, Hugmun, Carla Palette, Resn, Studio Blackburn, Rabbithole, TRiC, Justified Studio and U.I.WD. for clients like OpenAI, Channel 4 and Getty. Each project is accompanied by an in-depth interview delving into key details such as the timeline, team and challenges, as well as their candid thoughts on the end result. This is a digital downloadable file in both EPUB and PDF formats.

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