If you color the map of the Netherlands with the places where mounds are or once stood, the province of Friesland (in the northern part of the Netherlands) turns dark. The elevated residential mound is typical for the Frisian landscape. A new knowledge and information center is located on the highest mound, in Hegebeintum. A wealth of history is hidden in these artificial hills, which have been inhabited since the seventh century BC.

Archaeological exhibits are often dark and use archaic (serif) fonts. We chose to keep the design light and to use contemporary (Acumin) and somewhat futuristic (Neue Machina) typography. In a sense, the mounds are not a relic, but still relevant due to rising sea levels.

Papier is a British brand that sells notebooks, cards and a lot of different paper goods. Their new identity, designed by Ragged Edge, features illustrations by Chiara Perano, a custom drawn logotype, a mix of Self Modern Regular and Italic for the headings, and Quarion for longer texts.

The Fold is a customer magazine by Papier.

Apologia di Socrate (Apology of Socrates) by Plato is an illustrated reissue of a paperback edition, made as a graphic design assignment at ISIA Faenza. The images reproduced in the book have been processed through JavaScript code using Processing. The main typfaces are Tomato Grotesk by Andrea Biggio and Soundshape XP01 by Giuseppe Tangaro who also designed the yet unpublished – and unnamed – typeface used for the book title.

Situated at the corner of Hurontario Street and Fairview Road East in Mississauga’s city centre, a contemporary community will take shape. Developed by Edenshaw with a design by Core Architects and Cecconi Simone, Alba will rise 32 storeys above the bustling downtown intersection – its fluid, curvilinear form offering sweeping views of its surroundings. With a reputation for sustainable and innovative building practices, Edenshaw is one of Canada’s most trusted and progressive boutique residential developers, and Alba is their newest addition to Mississauga’s residential landscape.

Engaged by Edenshaw and inspired by the undulating curvature of the architecture, Vanderbrand developed a contemporary brand identity and comprehensive launch campaign that would establish Alba not only as a desirable address within Mississauga, but as a distinct place in the world.

Set in loosely spaced uppercase, the logo features ABC Whyte Inktrap’s striking ink traps, resulting in a distinct visual motif. Conceived with reference to the flexibility of the building’s undulating envelope, the logo can be pulled apart and rearranged to create new and abstracted iterations. Whyte, with smooth and sharp transitions, contrasting with the inktrap style, is used for body copy. Both Whyte and Whyte Inktrap are available from Dinamo. Headers and captions are set in Ekstra by Good Type Foundry.

This year, tailoring is being reinterpreted: With lots of color, oversize cuts and 90s vibes – you can now find the best styles of the season in the new GQ Style.

For the issue of Spring 2021, GQ Style Germany magazine uses Continua as the main typeface for headlines, paired with subheads set in Fortescue. The smaller texts use Saol Text and Relative.

Indieplace is a true impact design agency. Founded in 2009, Indieplace is Finland’s market leader in influencer marketing, and its own network includes more than 1,000 influencers.

Indieplace Oy is part of the northern Finnish media company Kaleva Media. For their new identity they have chosen IvyPresto Display and Headline as the primary typefaces, supported by Work Sans for text.

Pararemos Todo (“We will stop everything”) is a series of ten posters to raise the voices of women during the women’s strike in Mexico on March 9th 2020. Read the full story (in Spanish) on Vice.com.

Art direction and concept by Debora Rodam. Photography by Sol Bela, assisted by Jenny Tran. Designed by Álvaro Franca using several weights and widths of Sharp Grotesk.

Maison Artis is a new company importing high-end natural wines and spirits. The agency is committed to finding and promoting quality handcrafted wines from around the world. Their mission is to bring forward the fruit of the exceptional work of inspiring and talented producers of wines and spirits committed to the preservation of our planet.

The colorful visual identity concretizes a direct connection between the environment, the vines, the type of products, the winegrowers and the distillers. The sans serif Soyuz Grotesk by The Temporary State, used for the logo, also becomes part of the playful illustrations as a wine glass and bottle. Added to the colorful but minimal illustrations as well as the classic Garamond Condensed typeface, it marries the home-made natural yet classic product.

The bottles are easily recognizable in stores with their house shaped labels in a 4 color palette. The stickers are chosen randomly and are a reminder that natural wine can be a surprise - your first sip will most probably be different than your last!

On stationery and website, Soyuz Grotesk is paired with ITC Garamond Condensed.

Util is a Lisbon-based brand, offering contemporary and understated designer furniture that is “internationally designed and locally produced.”

On their website, the collection is presented in a webshop, with downloadable product sheets, installation instructions and CAD-drawings. The atmosphere of the brand is conveyed with photo series of furniture in home settings, of the designers in their workplace, and by presenting clients in their own homes.

The typography deploys all three widths of Lyyra by Schick Toikka: Standard, Expanded and Extended. Lyyra’s angular shapes echo the shapes of Util’s collection, and add some funk to the clean design of the online store.

Product sheet.

Product sheet, detail.

Installation instructions.

Arde, moments and memories. Scented soy candles that celebrate fire, handmade in a workshop in Lima, Peru. Through a selection of aromas and textures, it collects your day as experiences. Set an intention, light the fire.

The visual approach for this project begins with understanding fire as an elemental celebration and a craft process. The packaging system explores the need to communicate of the brand. With a name as impressive as Arde (“Burn”), the use of Brrr for the typography is essential to stand out. Smaller text is set in Roboto Mono. The box represents this quality, with the support of a monospaced typeface as complement. On the other hand, the label showcases the layout system, as well as the typographic selection. Offset printing provides a texture to the design, generating small organic forms of ink.

The Wayward is an American brasserie at the historic Stephen Girard Building at 1170 Ludlow Street in Philadelphia, PA. The brand identity and the naming is by Cohere.

Sud is used for the logotype and as the main branding typeface. It’s paired with Altero, another all-caps sans serif. The text typeface is NewPanam.

Brand elements featuring an illustration of the building, the sign with the vertical logo variant, and the brand character named Mr. Wayward, “a dapper man with a penchant for hard work and craftsmanship”. It was drawn by illustrator Kelly Gillin-Schwartz.

Logotype on the window. “Wayward” is in Sud, the rest in Altero.

Detail from the menu on the website, with Sud and the outlined caps from Altero’s lowercase for headings. Text is rendered in two weights from NewPanam.

Exhibition design for Gala Dalí, the surrealist muse at Château des Baux-de-Provence.

Gala Dalí, born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova (7 September 1894 – 10 June 1982) in Russia, usually known simply as Gala, was the wife of poet Paul Éluard and later of artist Salvador Dalí, who were both prominent in surrealism. She was an important figure of the movement herself and inspired many other writers and artists.

The Château des Baux-de-Provence hosted an amazing exhibition about this wonderful artist and model who played a fundamental role in Salvador Dalí’s career.

République Studio took care of all the art direction and exhibition design, from the signage to the poster and brochure.

This exhibition was organized and produced by Culturespaces. Curating and texts by Marc Ernest Fourneau. Translations by Isabelle Eeman. Printing and installation by Atelier Shl. The typefaces are Saol Display by Schick Toikka and Söhne by Klim Type Foundry.

Four mediators came to us to help them launch their new business, a collaborative mediation practice that brought experienced mediators under one roof. For Sydney, this was a first.

In a sea of sameness, we saw an opportunity to stand out. An opportunity to create a brand that could reassure people without using stock imagery of smiling children and couples holding hands. And most importantly, an opportunity to tap into the ethos that connected the four women who were leading a new, collaborative approach to mediation.

‘The philosopher’s desk’ became our brand idea, informing everything from illustration, to colour, to the way we speak. The concept allowed us to hero the knowledge and professionalism of the mediators, while providing calm reassurance to their clients in times of crisis.

Designer — Emily Sneddon
Designer — James Marquet
Writer — Amy Scott
Illustrator — Petra Eriksson
Photographer — Nick Lawrence

Recoleta is used throughout, in multiple weights.

Founded in 2018, Shikoba Therapies combines the therapeutic power of essential oils, herbs and gemstones with reflexology techniques and energy principles to nurture your physical and spiritual well-being.

Studio Work worked closely with Shikoba Therapies to create a strategy that represented their ethos. With wellness and beauty in mind, we aimed to create an identity to attract the eye of individuals who practice self-care, ritual, and natural therapies. With a niche product and audience who practice wellness daily, it was important to look closely at where else this demographic shops and what they are attracted to. This trail of research led to us exploring outcomes, with a final execution of two typefaces, Romana for its distinctive cuts and Sporting Grotesque for its attitude and minimalist design. Art direction followed for all photographic shoots, using natural environments and candid poses of the products being used in daily life. To tie everything in primary brand colours of black and ivory deliver an effortlessly elegant aesthetic.

Product photography: Stitch Productions.

Collaborating with Chicago’s famed Merchandise Mart and BIFMA (the trade association for business and institutional furniture manufacturers), One Design developed a positioning strategy and brand system for Confluence Chicago™, a new programming track for NeoCon 2020 (now slated to 2021) focused on bringing together creative practitioners from across multiple modes of design.

The creative process can be mysterious. But peek below the surface, and you’ll find universal truths that unite us all—unexpected lessons to be learned, unique perspectives to be shared, and novel approaches to be taken that could benefit us all.

Confluence Chicago™ is a three-day creative summit that allows participants to connect across creative industries and design disciplines to discover, explore, and find inspiration in the common threads that unite our work.

A vibrant, fresh, and contemporary design system was developed to attract and connect with a younger audience—pulling away from the corporate traditions of NeoCon’s past. A bespoke, modular typeface rounded out the system—embracing the concept of unification across multiple modes of creative practice to create surprising, unexpected results.

Type specimen for Elbow Sans.

The travelling exhibition Roads of Arabia: Archaeological Treasures from Saudi Arabia was presented at the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece in 2019. It includes artefacts from the Arab Peninsula from prehistoric times to the 20th century, drawing a continuous line in time of the region's cultural history. The exhibition was inaugurated at the Louvre in 2010 and since then it has been shown in three different continents.

The exhibition at the Benaki Museum — the exhibition’s 16th stop — signifies the first event in the southeast Mediterranean. busybuilding was commissioned to design the poster and key visual for Roads of Arabia in Athens. The inspiration behind the design is the horizon of the desert, a visual element that is part of the exhibition's overall design. The duality of sand and sky becomes the backdrop against which the exhibition's main exhibits are presented, in order to highlight them.

This work uses Lucas Le Bihan’s Sporting Grotesque together with the Greek version designed by George Triantafyllakos (Atypical). The Arabic text on the exhibition walls uses an unidentified typeface.

This James Beard Award-winning bistro is the lovechild of former Balthazar chefs Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson. From the start, their intention was to create a French restaurant that doesn’t “try too hard to be French.”

Inspired by the effortless sophistication of Parisian café society and the retro glam of the Springs Collective interiors, the identity is a modern interpretation of a traditional brasserie. This sense of fearlessness has paid off, and now Frenchette is a celebrated spot with a carefree joie de vivre and a long waiting list.

See more images and lettering on the Mucca website.

Office Ours is a series of virtual studio tours presented by AIGA Chicago, focused on the nuts and bolts of running a creative practice. Featuring an evolving roster of studios, the programming track is an opportunity to dig below the surface and see how businesses operate, evolve, and thrive.

One Design created and named the series. An elegant, time-keeping variable logo and classic design system came to life online and off. A digital content hub—custom built by the One Design team—served to promote upcoming events in the series, and provide access to past episodes.

F37 Bolton is used throughout.

October 3rd 2020 marked the 30th anniversary of the German reunification. Apple Germany celebrates the milestone by presenting Gesichter Deutschlands (“Faces or Germany”) during the month October. Tech/business website W&V reports (translated):

The “Faces of Germany” campaign will present specially curated playlists, book, film and podcast recommendations until October 31. In addition, Apple introduces German app developers, “who have changed our lives with their apps”. The corresponding features with all their content can be found in iTunes. A corresponding special page was also put live on the Apple website.

As noticed by type designer Christoph Koeberlin, the corresponding artwork pairs collage illustrations with texts set in his Fabrikat Kompakt typeface.

Casa Forastero is a handmade candles brand founded by Oscar Olivas. For the typography, Andrés Higueros designed a custom-made typeface. AH Forastero is a serif display typeface with a modern and rustic touch that complements the concept and the graphic of the brand. It’s inspired by 1930s and 1940s letters carved into bronze, evoking a serious, elegant, and nostalgic feel. The glyph set has a complete set of uppercase characters, ligatures, and punctuation symbols. AH Forastero is used throughout the brand, from the packaging to the website, and is accompanied by the sans-serif Mabry by Colophon.

Photos by Rodrigo Chapa.
Branding and packaging design by Oscar Olivas.

AH Forastero includes accented characters, capital ligatures, punctuation glyphs, and a number of brand-related symbols. See more specimen images on the website of Andrés Higueros.

Website detail.

Website detail.