Case studies

Rustic charm and modern flair

With its postcard-worthy landscapes of pristine lakes, majestic mountains, and verdant parks, Muskoka stands as one of Canada’s leading summer destinations. Each year, Ontario residents escape to this idyllic municipality – affectionately known as “cottage country” for its abundance of holiday homes – seeking either a peaceful escape from city life or adventures in the great outdoors.

Whether you need dinner inspiration, entertainment for a rainy day, or forgotten essentials for a lake excursion when in Muskoka, Duq’s Supplies & Lifestyle serves as your comprehensive one-stop shop. “Duq’s functions as an emporium for all these needs,” explains Clare Chow, the Toronto-based designer who crafted the shop’s identity to resonate with both urban visitors and local residents. 

Motion in clever ways

Providing solutions across retail, healthcare, hospitality, and other sectors, Microlog specialises in the art of streamlining payment processes. The Scandinavian tech company has experienced remarkable growth and recognition in recent years, prompting the need for a brand revamp to establish its next chapter. This refresh required not just an updated look, but one that’s easily implementable – enabling the in-house team to communicate their approach and values effectively. Oslo-based motion design studio Øyedrops delivered a comprehensive identity update, encompassing a new logo, colour palette, typography, 3D visuals, website, and media assets.

Bottling the spirit of Islington Square

The branding for Islington Square, a mixed-used development located in the London borough of Islington, needed a bit of a shake-up. Its previous brand was aimed towards residential sales. But now, as an established destination, its brand needed to capture the vibrant experiences and retail offerings found throughout its boulevard and arcades, centring more on what the place had to offer. Campbell Hay, who was tasked with reimagining the branding, understood this shift in focus. “The original brand was focused on selling high-end, luxury apartments at Islington Square and it was a reflection of the lifestyle that comes with that,” Design Director Wai Ming Ng tells us. “The rebrand needed to be more approachable and accessible to a different, and in fact wider audience.”

Dancing rats and goats

Stil vor Talent is an independent techno music label based in Berlin with bags of experience – they have, after all, been around for 20 years. However, its branding – which included just a square logo with its name placed within the square at an angle – was a bit stuck in the past, unable to keep up with the digital world. So the label asked designer Mauro Simeon to help reimagine its identity. For Simeon, it was important to create a fully-fledged brand, which surpassed just a logo, to help the label express itself efficiently. “We switched the brand from a logo brand to a more complex brand system with more elements and more flexibility,” Simeon tells us.

A future-proof colour-blocked system

Artnet is where the art world meets. As a leading online resource for the international art market, it provides various tools, services, and resources for art enthusiasts, collectors, galleries, and institutions. While the platform’s audience had only grown over the years, its identity had gathered a bit of dust. So, when asked by Artnet, the London-based studio Village Green took on the task of reimagining its brand system. “Although Artnet had invested in a brand identity as recently as 2019, the existing system had become challenging for the internal team to use effectively. They needed a more intuitive and flexible solution that could be applied across a wide range of outputs, from day-to-day assets to larger campaigns,” says Lead Designer Tom Fearn. In addition to a more agile system, a key ask from Artnet was a wider, bolder colour palette to breathe new life into the brand, which had been anchored in orange and grey for some time. “While the previous identity was sophisticated and balanced, it required a high degree of design nuance, and over time, users had drifted from the brand guidelines. Our goal was to strike a balance between the worlds of art and luxury, bringing a more dynamic and approachable energy to the brand,” Fearn tells us.

Plastered with stickers

Catering to a discerning, epicurean French audience, Maison Fleuret ticks all the boxes – a Parisian multi-faceted brand comprising a coffee shop, baking school, estate, hotel, and an exclusive product line featuring wines, premium coffee blends, and cold brews. When tackling the challenge of defining an all-encompassing look for the brand, Berlin-based designer and art director Carla Palette explains that a ‘less is more’ approach was the ideal way forward, both for target consumers and logistical considerations. “The simplicity and light-handedness in the design were intentional choices to ensure flexibility and clarity across all brand touchpoints,” she tells us. “By keeping the design stripped back and understated, we created a foundation that feels both elegant and enduring, capable of evolving with the brand over time without losing its distinct character.”

A game-changing new look

A driving force among those championing ‘football for good,’ Common Goal is a charitable movement that encourages players, managers, and other industry professionals to pledge 1% of their earnings toward grants in its Community network. While this may seem like a small figure, it can make a significant difference. Through these contributions and their support of global grassroots organisations and initiatives, Common Goal is working to unite the football community to tackle the greatest social challenges of our time.

As part of a broader strategic shift, they sought out the expertise of Scandinavian creative company Barkas to help them develop a new approach, one that acknowledges not only the scale and diversity of the global football community, but also the increasing overlap between sport, culture, and lifestyle. And, perhaps most importantly, this strategy needed to unite and strengthen Common Goal’s community.

Typeface

Melun

Melun, a typeface designed by French type designer and Lift Type co-founder Romain Oudin, draws inspiration from the geometric typefaces of his childhood, including typographic classics, Barbie doll logos, and the distinctive aesthetics of Air Jordan sneakers. The typeface incorporates elements from historical designs like Futura, Avant Garde Gothic, and particularly Rudolf Koch's Kabel Bold, and has been designed for versatility and expression, with three distinct families: Display (with distinctive notches inspired by 1970s typeface Embrionic), Normal (optimised for readability), and High (bridging the two with pronounced diagonals).⁠

The Shift

It’ll flex, but will it break? With Frontify, we explore how to build foolproof flexible systems

Welcome to The Shift, a series presented in collaboration with one of the world’s leading brand-building platforms, Frontify. Here, we’ll dive deep into the realm of flexible, dynamic branding. We’ll be tapping into the sharpest minds in design – from visionary studios to leading independent designers – to understand what it takes to build a dynamic identity.

While flexible systems are growing in popularity among clients, to what extent are they foolproof? In this third instalment of our series, we’ll explore the technical backbone of dynamic brand identities and the custom generative tools that are enabling greater co-creation. From sonic solutions to flexing fonts, we’ll uncover the thinking that powers these exciting creations, with insights from Dinamo Typefaces, FAY and DesignStudio, who dig into some of their experiences in creating innovative tools and toolkits.

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The Process Digital 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 digital bundle includes EPUB and PDF versions of The Process, The Process Two, 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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