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The Newsletter 153
Projects, jobs, mockups, books and more
Elliott Panam-Moody
December 16, 2024
Case studies
Motorcycles and matcha, together?
Motorcycle Matcha is not your regular tea brand. Here, the story is as much about the tea as it is about how it was found. The brand came to life when its founder, Gaston Becherano, went on an expedition across Japan on two wheels, a journey that led to partnerships with three multi-generational farming families, “each producing matcha in small batches using time-honoured techniques.” This conversation between the artisanal quality of its tea and the brand’s adventurous soul is celebrated in many ways in its identity and packaging, designed by Saint-Urbain.
Scribbly, shifting, and bursting with life
In a world where social media never sleeps, Manychat is a go-to for social media marketing. This nifty platform helps content creators slide into DMs with style, crafting clever chatbots and automated messages across the social media’s messaging universe. Their Instagram Summit brings together industry leaders, innovative strategies, and cutting-edge insights that help businesses harness the full potential of Instagram marketing. Like every iteration of the Summit’s identity, the look of 2024 was crafted in-house, giving the team plenty of flexibility and control.
An expressive world of abstract shapes
Perfect for book lovers on the go, doing housework, or simply eager to rest their eyes while they enjoy a good book, Storytel is a must-have for audiobook fans. Following a major rebrand in 2019, the platform has unveiled an evolution of its visual identity, delivered by champions of colourful and expressive design, illo. The task for the Italy-based design studio was to deliver an abstract visual system that expands upon and elevates their existing identity framework. “While the logo is often the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about a brand,” says Founder & Creative Director Ilenia Notarangelo, “we believe that illustration, motion design, and, more broadly, all visual imagery truly convey the brand’s personality to its users.”
A star, reborn
Like any great rebrand of a historic hotel, Dennis’ identity for Barcelona’s Hotel Regina captures the establishment’s legacy while adding a modern sparkle that today’s guests will connect with. “The hotel’s owners were practically born there, with the business being in the family since 1957,” Creative Director Josh Nathanson explains. “It being such a personal project meant that it was paramount to respect the history of the hotel while ensuring that it appealed to younger generations. A big part of our strategy makes an effort to position the hotel as ‘old is cool’!”
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Interviews
OtherType.Studio
OtherType.Studio knows a thing or two about creating typefaces. Although they’re a young studio, its team has been living and breathing typefaces for over a decade. They created a typeface whose characters change upon interaction during the early days of variable typefaces, crafted a custom type for Tanqueray that shines on their bottles and through their brand, and debuted their first retail typeface.
We caught up with Founder Matt Jenkins to trace the roots of the studio and understand where they’re coming from and where they’re headed. Along the way, he tells us about the studio’s drive to create typefaces that favour simplicity of form over style, unpacks the design of the studio’s pair of first retail typefaces – Casa Alpha and Casa Beta – and tells us how the process of designing Casa helped the studio to understand “where we sit within the type world.”
SODAA
Since setting up shop in 2018, Melbourne-based Studio of Design and Art (SODAA) has carved out its own creative path. Between creating custom dubplates with General Levy, their playful approach to web design, and their commitment to an open studio policy, SODAA has built a practice that balances passion projects with client work while fostering genuine connections with its collaborators. Here, Co-founders Thomas Benson and Taiki Monden joined us to reflect on their journey from a conversation in Tokyo to becoming one of Melbourne’s most intriguing design studios.
Shiqing Zhu
Shiqing Zhu has come a long way, both literally and figuratively. She’s made her way from Shanghai to the heart of New York, now working as a Designer at Koto’s NYC studio. She’s also grown from a starry-eyed kid who was steered into the world of design through her love for anime to being a designer with polished skills working on identities and strategies for heavy-hitting brands.
A lot of her work today is touched by her keen understanding of the similarities and differences between the cultures of the East and the West. Having grown up in Shangai and now living in the Big Apple, she can easily point out what makes each part of the world tick, and she brings this understanding to her work. “My familiarity with both Western and Eastern cultures allows me to think beyond a single viewpoint,” she tells us. We caught up with Zhu to look back on her journey, her arrival in New York, and finding her place in Koto that began with an internship, and along the way, get a taste of her hunger to keep creating contextual, meaningful work.
Mockups
Jobs
Books
The Process – Digital Edition
The Process showcases the unused and unseen ideas, concepts, mockups and sketches that were created during the branding process. The book contains projects by Bienal, Collins, DesignStudio, DIA, Franklyn, Hype Type Studio, Passport, POST—, Public-Library, SocioDesign, Vertigo and Yuta Takahashi. This is a digital downloadable file in both EPUB and PDF formats.
Useful links
