visual-identity
(27)
The Name Went Back. The Griffin Stayed.
Gretel makes identities built to travel from a museum wall to a phone screen. In Philadelphia, its most revealing design lesson arrived after the launch.
The Company That Sells One Word at a Time
A memorable name may be only six letters long. Catchword has spent more than a quarter-century building the machinery that makes those letters feel inevitable - and keeps them out of court.
Colony and the Art of Knowing What Not to Design
The Los Angeles studio built its reputation by making brands unmistakable. Its more interesting habit is deciding, before a single logo moves, whether design is the problem at all.
The Logo Is Only the First One Percent
Grafik Design Co makes identities for the moment after the reveal - when a logo meets a deadline, a sprawling team, and the thousandth asset nobody planned for.
The Magazine That Became a Record Label's Missing Department
AUSTERE began as an underground-culture magazine. Then Natasha Brito turned its eye for taste into an agency, a classroom and, eventually, software for musicians who need a recognizable world before they need another post.
The $150,000 Question: What Is a Brand Worth Before Anyone Sees the Logo?
MasonBaronet charges for the part of branding most companies rush past: deciding what the business means. Its work begins with diagnosis, not decoration - and the price makes that conviction impossible to miss.
DDM Branding Built a Business in the Space Between Milan and Miami
The agency's real product is not a logo. It is a controlled journey from cultural research to the dinner table, the trade-show floor and the city outside.
May Made It Look Simple. The Work Was Anything But.
A small Southern California studio sold an unusually large promise: become the creative department its clients did not have. The evidence is in the work - from a cloud startup's first logo to the screen where its customers clicked.
The Creative Studio With a Seat at the Investment Table
Born from Airbnb alumni and built inside WestCap, CōLab treats brand, product, research, and growth as one operating problem. Its best work begins where the polished deck ends: inside the company that has to make the idea real.
MacKenzie makes complicated places make sense
A national park, a ferry network, a century-old accounting firm: MacKenzie helps organizations explain what they have become. The interesting work happens before anyone draws a logo.
un studio en plus makes the brand leave the brand book
A PDF template, a fountain-pen website, a room full of animated artwork. The Querétaro studio’s work asks a practical question: what happens when a brand has to do something?
Brick Design knows where a brand comes apart
A logo can survive the boardroom and still unravel in a sales deck. Brick Design’s work for Mood, Qwilt and Localytics shows why a brand needs more than a good first impression.
MiresBall and the art of making the complicated clear
A rejected Intel pitch taught John Ball to look past the pretty picture. The San Diego agency’s work shows what happens when design starts with the decision a customer needs to make.
Friends Everywhere and the art of making one shoot go further
Seven mini-campaigns. Two shoot days. Friends Everywhere’s Levi’s work reveals an agency built around a practical question: how much can a good idea do before you need another one?
Traina and the art of being seen differently
A space museum looking forward. A grocer finding its neighbors. A tractor maker recruiting technologists. Traina works in the gap between what a company has become and what people still think it is.
McLean helped create Monster by questioning the can
Hansen’s wanted a bigger energy drink. McLean proposed a different kind of brand. Its work since then reveals when packaging should shout, and when it should leave well enough alone.
Chase Design Group knows what to keep
From Madonna’s lettering to the freezer aisle, Chase Design Group has made a business of giving brands a new look without erasing their personality. Its most revealing work starts with a surprisingly difficult question: what deserves to stay?
Wunderdogs makes complicated companies easier to believe in
Founded by former venture capitalists, the agency turns investment theses, technical products and ambitious missions into brands people can understand. The work gets interesting where a new logo stops being enough.
CRUSH makes serious businesses hard to ignore
Brewing tanks, cybersecurity and council services are hardly easy briefs. From a Derbyshire studio, CRUSH turns technical expertise into brands people can understand - and gives clients the tools to keep them working.
Play SF makes complicated companies easier to understand
A neuroscience textbook, a brewery’s restless patterns and 50 websites for Figma reveal how the San Francisco design studio turns technical ideas into things people can actually use.
DGVC gives familiar characters a new place to live
From Powerpuff Girls patterns to a café racer’s color palette, Dan Georgopoulos builds identities that travel beyond the logo. His Orange County studio makes its case in the objects people wear, carry, buy, and ride.
Moniker Makes the Logo the Beginning
From Coinbase to Dallas soccer, the San Francisco identity studio builds the rules behind a recognizable brand. Its most revealing work begins where the logo presentation usually ends.
405 Group and the work a logo leaves behind
Eight hundred possible names. Two decades of annual reports. Inside the Berkeley design firm that follows a brand from its first introduction to its everyday working life.
IE Design + Communications makes complexity worth a closer look
A Grammy invitation with a tape-pull trick. Five Cornell websites on one deadline. This California studio finds the human detail inside the institutional brief.
Flagship wants your brand to do more than look good
From Rhode skincare to a beer built for the back bar, Flagship turns commercial questions into identities people can recognize. Its most useful work starts before anyone opens a design file.
Barretto-Co. puts design to work close to home
An Oakland studio pairs corporate branding with public-school pride and civic reporting. Its most revealing work shows what happens when design has to answer to the people down the street.
Offset
Offset is a Napa Valley company that pairs a direct-to-consumer ecommerce platform built specifically for fine wine with a brand design studio. Formed in 2015 from the merger of Byron Hoffman's design firm Hoffman & Co. and the development shop 750 Group, Offset gives wineries and fine-wine merchants both the software to sell - allocations, clubs, open cart and point of sale - and the identity, packaging, and storytelling to stand out. Clients range from legacy estates like Frog's Leap, Grace Family Vineyards, and Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant to new producers such as RAEN.