The National Portrait Gallery in London gets a brand facelift

The design features bold photography of the collection alongside clean and simple use of typography. It joins a current trend within museum and arts branding for a stripped-back, modern approach which aims to attract new audiences and throw off any stuffy associations of the past.

A new symbol for the gallery has been created which is based on an original sketch by its first director, Sir George Scharf, who entwined and encircled ‘NPG’ in a workbook, dated 1893. Discovered in the archive, this sketch has been transformed by the illustrator and typographer, Peter Horridge, known for his logos and crests for everyone from the Royal Household and King Charles III to Liverpool Football Club. 

The new logo joins other uses of the initials NPG throughout the gallery’s building, within the metalwork of railings, embossed onto furniture, and as part of original mosaics.

Eurostar Group receives a rebrand from DesignStudio

Comprising a new logo, symbol, colour palette, photography, illustration and sonic branding, the new identity brings both companies together under the Eurostar name, which was chosen “due to its powerful equity and global recognition”.

The new branding will launch in full by the end of 2023, and hopes to put a modern face on the Eurostar Group while respecting the heritage of its two brands. “A key part of the success of our partnership was to work closely with Eurostar and Thalys stakeholders to capture the essence of each brand’s near 30-year heritage, whilst evolving them into the future,” says Julien Queyrane, DesignStudio creative director.

The ‘spark’ is intended to be used across the full brand experience – from train livery and across stations, to digital platforms including website, apps, social media and TVCs. The new identity also modernises the Eurostar and Thalys colours, featuring a punchy blue and deep navy, and six secondary colours.

Koto juices up the branding for checkout platform Bolt

Founded in 2014, checkout platform Bolt offers one-click payments for over 300 retailers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, in a time of ever-increasing convenience, the company has raised millions of dollars in investment, taking it to the level of a ‘decacorn’ – that’s a startup with a value of $10b+, for readers outside the world of venture capital.

The tech company brought Koto in to overhaul its visual identity and create something that could grab attention in a competitive landscape of “somewhat bland sans-serif wordmarks”, according to Koto creative director Arthur Foliard.

“There was a huge and unprecedented opportunity to stand out from the crowd and to bring more personality into a pretty expected space,” he tells CR. “There’s a reason behind it. Most of these brands want to look secure, but you don’t need to be bland to feel trustworthy. By prioritising feeling safe they all feel the same.”

Even the tail of the @ sign includes a spiky edge, thanks to a bespoke typeface by PangramPangram. In total, says Foliard, there’s 15 electrified glyphs, chosen as the characters users would see most often.

Ad campaign tackles everyday gender bias

We might think that we have moved beyond the stereotypes associated with certain careers – for example, that a CEO would be a man, and a nurse a woman – but research conducted by CPB, the ad agency behind the Imagine campaign, shows otherwise.

The Imagine poster campaign, which is supported by Creative Equals, Goodstuff, Assembly and Open Media, is running across the UK on social, OOH and in cinemas. It is accompanied by a colouring book, which can be bought from cpblondon.com (with monies raised going to Beyond Equality and Young Women’s Trust), which encourages parents to talk to their children about gender roles.

Bendy signage courtesy of Fieldwork Facility

The signage is designed to “capture the spirit of play and bring a little bit of joy to the neighbourhood,” according to Fieldwork Facility founder Robin Howie.

Howie says the wayfinding project is designed to echo the net zero pledges of the new London development – which is being led by Barnet Council and UK developer Argent Related, and is designated a Park Town for Future London.

A series of snake-like yellow signs show cyclists and walkers how many minutes are left in their journey, and appear wrapped around lamp posts and growing out of curb-side grass.

“Good, at least in terms of wayfinding, is directing visitors to the development successfully, but great looks like putting a playful little smile on someone’s face or encouraging someone to walk with more of a spring in their step,” says Howie. Quite right too.

Visa launches new brand identity system

Branding agency Mucho revealed the early stages of Visa’s brand evolution 2 summer ago, and the financial services company last year launched the full update to its brand identity system. The agency highlighted that “to most people, Visa has been synonymous with credit and debit cards”, and one of the key aims of the new branding was to “ensure it is seen as more than a credit card company”.

Based on 200 hours of stakeholder conversations, the agency also developed a new mission statement for Visa that leans into brand purpose: “We believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift everyone everywhere.” This philosophy is tied into the brand symbol, an equals sign, which has been extracted from the recognisable bars that were historically used in the Visa logo lock up prior to 2005. “The symbol has always been there – we just dialed into the opportunity to use it in a creative way,” said Mucho creative director Rob Duncan.

Key to the new branding system was establishing consistency worldwide while helping the existing design elements – such as the Visa wordmark – work harmoniously in digital environments, adjusting colour palettes to work better on digital touchpoints (namely small mobile screens) as part of this.

The agency developed an iconography and illustration system, brought together by the Visa colours (shown below), and worked with Commercial Type on a new typeface, Visa Dialect, which was designed with legibility in digital executions in mind. Mucho also focused on enhancing Visa’s B2B standing with a sleek range of assets using motion design, made with the help of creative studio Field.io.

Take away your takeaway

Takeaway packaging is the third largest source of littering in cities across the world, according to recent research by the University of Cádiz in Spain.

As Norway’s largest takeaway restaurant chain, McDonald’s is a substantial part of the problem in Norwegian cities – and it doesn’t help that its iconic golden arches make its packaging very noticeable. But in a new campaign led by Nord DDB, the fast food chain is taking ownership of this role.

Leading with the message ‘take away your take away’, the campaign is all about showcasing the ugly side of McDonald’s packaging and encouraging fast food lovers to help the brand reduce littering.

Photos of McDonald’s trash lying around in the streets of Oslo have been artfully captured by photographer Jói Kjartans for print, social media, OOH displays and McDonald’s trays in order to reach as many customers as possible.

Trash cans have been placed next to OOH displays so that the golden arches can be used as a trash-guide, and the campaign also includes a commercial shown on TV and online. As for the longer term, the brand has initiated several measures to create long-term solutions.

Director Daniel Kwan releases a kid book with A24

After breaking into the world of book publishing several years ago, film production company A24 is expanding its focus to younger audiences. Earlier this year, it released its first children’s book project – a reprint of Star Child by Claire A Nivola, which, in a clever ploy, was quoted in another A24 enterprise, Mike Mills’ 2021 film, C’mon C’mon.

One of Kwan’s new books is called I’ll Get to the Bottom of This, beautifully illustrated by Sean Lewis. The story follows a dog detective investigating a car pile-up that leaves all of the characters (also dogs, which may explain the traffic accident) trapped in a tunnel. While everyone tries to work together to find a way out, the detective is more preoccupied with finding someone to blame.

The investigations take an even more obscure turn as his line of questioning extends to the main suspect’s organs, before he’s challenged to think beyond himself by a higher cosmic power.

A playful visual identity for plant-based milk brand KiddiWinks

The 100% plant-based milk reimagines a childhood staple with a formula comprising oat, chickpeas and chicory root, providing eight grams of plant-based protein and more than six grams of fibre.

Ahead of KiddiWinks’ launch in the US (it will roll out to other markets in the coming months), the team brought in New York-based Young Jerks to develop its branding and London creative agency Wildish & Co to lead on its website design.

The agencies started by asking themselves, what would a plant-based milk brand for kids look like? “KiddiWinks is a really interesting brand as it hits the intersection of sustainability and health, both key decision drivers in purchase decisions – especially for parents,” says Wildish & Co managing director, Sam Fresco.

Young Jerks opted for an illustration-led visual identity, which is full of youthful personality but also stylish enough for grownups. At its heart is a “gloopy and milky” hand-drawn logotype, says senior art director Kelly Thorn. Supporting fonts include Caspar by Flavor Type and Visby Round by Connary Fagen as the body copy, chosen thanks to its “soft serve” feel, she adds.

Ragged Edge rebrands Gaia, a startup offering the world’s first IVF insurance

Offering the world’s first IVF insurance, Gaia was created after its founder, Nader AlSalim, had a firsthand experience of what is a complex and expensive procedure. He was inspired to find a way of helping other families access IVF without succumbing to the financial hurdles that often make it impossible or unsustainable in the long-term.

Ragged Edge’s refreshed branding for Gaia counters these depictions, instead offering an inclusive, welcoming picture of the modern family, as well as a more empathetic and realistic understanding of the IVF journey. Using simple yet effective collaging techniques, it shows the many experiences one can go through during this process, as well as the different kinds of people that choose to use IVF.

This diversity is further embraced through Gaia’s new wordmark, which features both an uppercase and lowercase ‘a’ to represent the fact that no two families are the same. Meanwhile, an inspiring yet grounded colour palette aims to capture the difficulties of going through an IVF journey without compromising the optimism needed along the way.

As a whole, Gaia’s new identity is empathetic yet realistic. Unlike other organisations within the fertility industry, it does not shy away from the fact that the success of IVF is never guaranteed, and the process itself may not be an easy one. But nor does it make the treatment feel out of reach. Instead, it presents IVF as something that everyone should have access to, no matter their financial situation or the makeup of their family.