Features

Autonomy, connection and play

Stupid Studio, a design and communications studio based in Denmark, has created an innovative mentorship framework. “As a team, we always pursue opportunities to learn something new,” the studio tells us. “But we also realised there was so much skill, talent, and experience within our studio, and that we needed to take full advantage of that. What we were missing was a framework that could help us all share and receive knowledge.” Born from this deep-rooted passion for continuous learning, collaboration, and the joy of knowledge sharing, this mentorship framework shakes up traditional learning paradigms, fostering a unique two-way exchange of knowledge.

Multi-faceted yet ‘invisible’

As a trailblazer in financial management solutions, Brex teamed up with Studio Freight to craft a brand identity for their AI-driven product line. Given Brex’s standing as a category forerunner, the Ohio-based creative studio was tasked with the challenge of designing an identity that not only upholds this prestige but also accentuates the seamless amalgamation of AI in their financial ecosystem. All the while, it was crucial to keep the essence of Brex alive in the look. “Working within Brex’s brand system to create a sub-brand for their new AI product was both a challenge and an opportunity,” Creative Director Patrick Torres tells us. “The goal was to develop an identity that honoured and extended the larger brand while also standing on its own two feet as a distinct offering.” At the same time, this AI product marked a huge milestone – so the identity needed to rise to the occasion. The sub-brand was unveiled at an event in San Francisco – featuring speakers from Google, Scale, and Sequoia – where it provided a platform for Brex’s founders and CEO to engage with industry leaders.

Pixels, plastic and positivity

Born from the innovative powerhouse Colossal Biosciences, Breaking is not your average plastic degradation company – it’s a catalyst for a cleaner, greener planet. At the heart of this revolution is MICROBE X-32™, a gamechanger with the potential to drastically overhaul the way we manage plastic waste, tackling even the most stubbornly resistant types of plastics that have, until now, defied degradation.

6 identities with hot brand merch

Typefaces

Mynor-B

While the design process of a typeface is usually pretty linear and clear-cut from drawing to rendering, the making of The Northern Block’s Mynor-B took a different route, embracing an unexpected yet organic approach to putting a typeface together. The typeface’s story began with the first iteration of Mynor, a modern, squarish sans-serif typeface inspired by 1950s machine-readable fonts like OCR-A and B. “The limitations of technology dictated that forms contain few curves; so, Mynor created a perfect template for something polar opposite in its aesthetic, promoting a different way of constructing letterforms,” says Jonathan Hill, Founder of The Northern Block, who designed the typeface.

FT Scenik

The typeface, designed by UK-based type foundry Frost, tips its hat to the design culture of Margate, a town on England’s southeast coast that has a special connection to Frost. “I was born and grew up in Margate, so I have always felt connected to the town,” says Founder & Type Designer Harrison Marshall. “But it’s the nostalgic typography throughout the town, that you can’t help but notice, that inspired FT Scenik.”

Interviews

EightySeven

A simple, graphic ‘spark’ is the centrepiece of EightySeven’s refreshed look. The remote-first design studio – with a tight-knit team that often meets across NYC, Miami and Chicago – turned five and rebranded its practice to shine a stronger light on the way they’ve evolved over the past years. The ‘spark’ is full of meaning – the simplicity of the symbol that underpins the rebrand echoes the team’s ability to define a simple, powerful idea that has been helping them build meaningful brand worlds since 2019. To give us a closer look at their rebrand, Founder Maxwell Billings peels back the layers of the process and tells us why working remotely is “not just important, but vital” to the experience they offer to their clients.

News

Love + Money turned your brand guideline PDFs into ToolKits. Here’s the results:

Our brands won’t change the world if our clients can’t use them.

Too many brand projects end at the point of handover. All the great thinking that goes into designers’ world-changing ideas and their considered systems gets relegated to a PDF nobody opens. Brands often end their life when they leave the studio. And even if they survive, they often get killed by the client.

But the first day a client starts using a brand should be the first day of its life.

For over 12 years, Love + Money has been sweating the handover problem for themselves and their clients. ToolKit™ is the result – custom brand guidelines, online. Built in Figma, and pushed to the internet in minutes. Brand systems built on digital best practice, and ready to be used, shared and updated in an instant.

Now, a brand can live where clients and their customers connect: on the internet.

Love + Money was curious to see if their system works for other studios. They wanted to test that ToolKit™ was a platform that could work across any visual style or design culture. So they thought they’d run an experiment.

In March, they asked TBI readers to submit their favourite brand guidelines to them to turn into a ToolKit™ for free. Within three days they received nearly 90 submissions from marketers, design studios and freelancers. They selected eight to turn into ToolKits.

Mockups

Books

The Process Five is out now!

That’s right, no more pre-order. After many months in the making, we’re super proud to announce that our book, The Process Five, is available now and shipping worldwide! It is an exclusive showcase of previously unseen and unused work from 10 world-class projects, casting a spotlight on the ideas, concepts, mockups and sketches that shaped their final outcomes and were left behind.

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