Case studies

“Sharper, edgier and more impactful”

“We pride ourselves on being a Club of firsts; The first team to wear numbers on our shirts, the first non-league team to win the FA Cup, the first British team to win a European trophy – or two, and we wanted to harness that daring spirit the Club was built on for this project,” Kieran Murphy, Head of Creative & Brand at Tottenham Hotspur tells us about the undertaking to create the club’s hot new look. With a refreshed icon, a revived monogram and a remastered custom typeface, the club is looking sharper than ever before. The extensive project – which breathes new life into the historic club and the way it shows up in the world – was led by London-based design studio Nomad.

Built with heart

Heartful wants to do things differently. In “welcoming a new era for short-term accommodation,” Heartful is creating space for rentals that are focused on community and are thoughtful about their impact on the environment. It’s a home for short stays that are different from the rest – they’re warm and welcoming, carefully put together, and are gentle on the land they stand on. To reflect its committed approach, Heartful reached out to For Good Design Lab to not just craft its brand story, but also bring it to life through a tasteful visual world.

Interviews

Joy Studio

Joy Studio’s work is chockablock with surprising moments – there’s gritty, textured work for running crews and brands, a zen-looking mascot for a conference held for World Mental Health Day, and a 3D poofy, furry mushroom for a local farm growing medicinal mushrooms. What this illustrates is the studio’s ability to respond to any piece of culture, achieved by tapping into their keen sense of what makes any brand tick.

The Kraków-based studio, though, has a special love for brands that celebrate running and those that stand at the cutting edge of culture with something interesting to say. As Joy Studio rightly says, “Design shapes culture shapes design.” Running and culture are deeply intertwined, as are design and culture, and this is something Joy Studio understands. Unspooling the overlapping strands between these worlds is what they are best at.

To dig into their world, we caught up with Co-founder Radek Sadlik and he unpacked the studio’s love for running (even the serifs on their ‘R’ mascot seem like running shoes to us), the challenges and joys of working in such a nice space, and walked us through how their journey has shaped up so far – from starting small during the pandemic to staying small but thinking big.

Ba’ndo

Ba’ndo is busy having fun. The Istanbul-based studio, with an arm in London, is up to many things – it’s been busy crafting typefaces, creating identities for the likes of sustainable eyewear company REUNIK and MAD, a digital news portal, a project that has now won a trove of awards, while also setting up a lab within its studio that nurtures and chisels their designers’ many talents. But perhaps what truly sets Ba’ndo apart is its drive to be a community – a safe space to hold conversations about design that deepen the practice of designers not just from their agency, but any creative who’s interested in pushing the door open and joining in.

“We see design not just as a profession but as a way of life, and we believe it should be enriching,” Co-founder & CCO Emrah Doğru tells us. The agency regularly organises workshops, open to all designers, aimed at nurturing the design community. To get a closer look at its inner workings, we asked Doğru to walk us through life at Ba’ndo and give us a glimpse of their projects, passion, obsessions, and plans for the future, which are less about what hovers on the horizon, and more about “living today as if it were tomorrow.”

Villagers Studio

When Sam Smith opened up his design shop, Villagers Studio, he knew exactly what he wanted to build – a pro-remote studio that’s quick on its feet, built entirely on trust. With an aim to “bring joy to the full branding journey,” Smith wanted to craft a space that’s different from the rest that’s out there.

Being remote is an important part of Villagers’ identity, as it not only helps the practice choose the talent they want to work with, but allows them to choose them freely, not worrying about where they’re based. “We want to work with the best; no matter where they are in the world, wherever they are most comfortable,” Smith tells us. The quick-footed studio works nimbly, assembling a team of what they like to call like-minded ‘Village People’ based on a project’s ask.

But Villagers wants to offer more than the work they make. For Smith, it’s important to give back to the community he works for, and become a space where designers – no matter where they come from – can ask for help. In this conversation Smith lifts the curtains on the year-old practice, giving us a view of their world and work, while also showing us where they’re headed.

8 ultra-violet identities

Templates

“Design doesn’t just shape culture – it draws strength from it.”

Radek Sadlik, Joy Studio
3rd December 2024

Jobs

Magazines

TYPEONE Issue Five

TYPEONE is a bi-annual magazine from the creators of Femme Type that fuses type mediums with mainstream topics such as culture, business, technology, innovation, global issues and more. In our opinion, it has quickly established itself as the best magazine for typography in the industry, both in its forward-thinking content and its ever-evolving design. That’s why when they invited us at The Brand Identity to be the Guest Editor of TYPEONE’s fifth issue – a first for the magazine – we jumped at the opportunity.

Fittingly, the theme of the issue is ‘Branding x Typography.’ Two undeniably interconnected topics that we know and love dearly. In our role as Guest Editor, we’ve curated 136 pages of editorial content that delve into the connections between branding and typography that haven’t been explored in great detail before, or maybe don’t get the attention they should, or simply aren’t fully understood.

For the cover design, we commissioned one of our favourite graphic designers of all time, Daan Rietbergen. He’s injected his reputably bold approach to typography onto the front and centre of the publication, drawing a completely custom ‘5’ for us.

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