JVAL | Brand New Articles

Simply Daylight-ful
New Logo and Identity for Daylight Computer Company by The Office of Ordinary Things
Reviewed Set 23, 2024

Launched in May 2024, Daylight Computer Company is an electronics manufacturer headquartered in San Francisco, CA. The company is focused on the pursuit of the third timeline, an ideological framework proposed by Daylight’s former Philosopher-in-Residence Peter N Limberg, which serves as a middle-ground between the conflicting futurist theories of accelerationism and decelerationism. While accelerationists seek to drastically intensify the progression of technology in order to destabilize existing systems to force societal change and decelerationists seek to halt or reverse technological progress in order to protect humanity from the corrupting forces of technology and capitalism, the “third timeline” imagines a world in which neither strategy comes to pass, and instead technologies are developed in symbiosis with human life.

To that end, Daylight has recently launched their first product, the DC-1. It is an Android tablet with a black-and-white reflective LCD display, giving it the look of an e-paper device (a la Kindle) but with a 60 Hz refresh rate and touch gesture sensitivity that make it perform more like a traditional tablet. Packaged with a pressure sensitive Wacom stylus and a padded case, the DC-1 aims to be an outdoors-first computer optimized for reading, writing, and drawing under direct sunlight. The identity for Daylight was designed by San Francisco-based studio The Office of Ordinary Things.

Read the full article at Brand New

A Mundo of Difference
New Name, Logo, and Identity for Mundo Chachapoyas by Studioa
Reviewed Aug 13, 2024

The Tourist Corridor of Utcubamba is a collection of cultural and ecological sites that run along the Utcubamba River Valley in the Amazonas Region of Peru. The region is associated with the pre-Incan Chachapoya people, also called “Warriors of the Clouds”, who lived there from 800 – 1740 C.E. and lend their name to the modern-day capital city of Chachapoyas. Ancient cities, cliff-side mausoleums, and vibrant living cities dot the countryside between natural hot springs, waterfalls, cloud forests, and wild orchids. In doing my background research on the Utcubamba Corridor, the pitch I keep coming across from travel guides and blogs is that it’s Machu Picchu without the crowds. The most direct point of comparison is the Kuelap Fortress, an ancient fortified citadel on the slopes of the Andes that draws in an estimated 200,000 tourists a year compared to Machu Picchu’s annual 1.5 million. Launched in September 2023 to promote tourism to the Utcubamba Corridor as Aventúrate Chachapoyas, the new name, logo, and identity Mundo Chachapoyas was unveiled in June 2024 by Lima, Peru-based Studioa.

Read the full article at Brand New

Livin’ la Vida Sana
New Logo and Identity for Viva by ILLO Studio
Reviewed Jul 2, 2024

Viva is an app focused on women’s health for the Latin American market. The app consists of audio courses which focus on coaching different aspects of mental, physical, and professional health. The company was founded in Uruguay in 2021 and launched the Spanish version of their app in May of 2024, with an English version currently in development and planned to launch later this year. The initial brand and identity was designed by Turin, Italy-based IILO Studio.

Read the full article at Brand New

The Blank Page
New Logo and Identity for Kimberly-Clark by Someoddpilot
Reviewed May. 21, 2024

Kimberly-Clark began in 1872 as a paper mill operator in Neehah, Wisconsin. They spent the next century and a half alternating between building more paper mills and finding new uses for paper. Being a mill operator in 19th century America, the company had already achieved the sort of economic dominance where towns were being renamed after the founder. But the modern era of Kimberly-Clark really kicked off in 1914, during the first World War. The need for surgical bandages was quickly depleting the global supply of cotton. Kimberly-Clark’s engineers had recently discovered a technology for turning woodpulp into a thin textile which was five times as absorbent as cotton and could be produced for half the price, which they dubbed Cellucotton. It was much less durable than traditional fabrics, but the low cost of production and the recent prevalence of germ theory coincided to turn Cellucotton’s inherent weakness into its strongest selling point – disposability.

When the war ended, Kimberly-Clark wasted no time in finding other hygiene products which could be made from their new miracle material – handkerchiefs were replaced by Kleenex, sanitary belts and flannels were replaced by Kotex, and eventually Kimberly-Clark would find itself engaged in a decades-long product innovation cold war with Procter & Gamble over the design of disposable diapers.

Today, the Kimberly-Clark headquarters can be found in Irving, Texas. The company sold off the last of its paper mills in 2013, but they maintain a workforce of over 40,000 employees, a standing on the Fortune 500, a 78% market share of the global paper products industry, and a portfolio of highly recognizable sub-brands like Kleenex, Kotex, Scott, Cottonelle, and Huggies. A refreshed version of the brand designed by Chicago, Illinois-based Someoddpilot was unveiled in April 2024.

Read the full article at Brand New

Cool Your Jets
New Logo and Identity for Bombardier by Lippincott
Reviewed Apr. 16, 2024

Founded in 1942, Bombardier is an aircraft manufacturer headquartered in Quebec, Canada. The business began as a means of marketing snowmobiles, but through a series of acquisitions and pivots became one of the world’s largest manufacturers of locomotives and aircraft by the 1990s. In 2015, the turbulent development of the CSeries line of airliners nearly bankrupted the company, leading to a consolidation which saw the sale of all of their operations outside of business jet manufacture and all of its offices outside North America. In addition to business jets, the company also manufactures aircraft platforms for government, defense, and humanitarian purposes. Last week, the company unveiled a new brand and identity designed by New York, NY-based Lippincott.

Read the full article at Brand New

Sign of the Times
New Logo and Identity for Docusign done In-house
Reviewed Apr. 16, 2024

Founded in 2003, Docusign is an electronic signature company headquartered in San Francisco, CA, with international offices in 13 countries and about 7,000 employees. A little about my Docusign experience: I thought I was familiar with Docusign. Over the years I’ve interacted with the company countless times via “sign here” links sent to me by insurance agents and freelance gigs and car dealerships. But I – always an employee, never an employer – figured they were more of a standard digital format and less of a business that made money; I pictured them as a more formal version of the PDF signature tool. If your perspective matches mine, you might be as shocked as I was to learn that the digital signature market is a 7.4 billion-dollar-industry, over which Docusign reigns supreme with a 56.33% market share. Continuing to build their dominance in the signature space, Docusign recently announced their entry into the SaaS business with a new AI-powered Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) platform, accompanied by a new identity designed in-house.

Read the full article at Brand New

Don’t Let It Go To Waste
New Logo and Identity for NVRD by Airsolid
Reviewed Feb. 27, 2024

Founded in 1907, the NVRD (Koninklijke Nederlandse Vereniging Voor Afval- en Reinigingsdiensten) is the Royal Dutch Association for Waste and Cleaning Services. It organizes and represents all of the various service companies operating at the municipal level in The Netherlands and enacts public policy on waste, recycling, and sustainability initiatives in the country. As a member of the European Union’s Municipal Waste Europe program, the NVRD is working with other European nations to implement a circular economy in which all recoverable waste is converted to new raw material by the year 2050. The new identity was designed by Airsolid, based out of Arnhem, Netherlands.

Read the full article at Brand New

All or Muffin
New Logo and Identity for Brompton House by UnitedUs
Reviewed Jan. 16, 2024

Founded in 2004, Brompton House is manufacturer of individually-wrapped sweet treats headquartered in the United Kingdom. It’s a relatively small family-run company with about 50 employees and a catalog of brownies, macaroons, pralines, and muffins which are sold throughout the UK and exported to France, Italy, Germany, and China. The Brighton, UK-based UnitedUs was brought in to update the Brompton House website and managed to talk their way into providing a full rebrand, which went live December 2023 and will continue to roll out during the first quarter of 2024.

Read the full article at Brand New

Strung Out
New Logo and Identity for 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival by Studio Najbrt
Reviewed Nov. 7, 2023

In 1946, the newly nationalized Czechoslovak film industry was looking to establish itself on the world stage. The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) was initially conceived as a non-competitive showcase for local and international films in the picturesque spa town of Karlovy Vary, Czechia. It didn’t take long for the event to evolve into a prestigious juried competition: by 1956 it was already being considered one of the premiere film events in Central and Eastern Europe and earned accreditation from the International Federation of Film Producers Associations. The festival became so popular, in fact, that between 1959 and 1993 it was decided that the KVIFF would alternate years with the Moscow International Film Festival (MIFF) so that socialist countries wouldn’t have their cinematic focus split. This year, the 57th festival attracted nearly 11,000 audience members to see 185 films from around the world — including over 400 filmmakers, 900 accredited film professionals, and 500 journalists.

The KVIFF swaps out its identity each year to reflect changing artistic trends. The 53rd and 55th years of the festival were covered on Brand New. Both of these designs, as well as the design we’re looking at today, as well as every design since 1995 have been created by Prague, Czechia-based Studio Najbrt.

Read the full article at Brand New

Give It All You’ve Gut
New Identity for GUT by&Walsh
Reviewed Oct. 5, 2023

GUT is an ad agency started in 2018 by DAVID alumni Anselmo Ramos and Gaston Bigio. Headquartered in Miami, FL, with offices in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and The Netherlands, their clients have included the likes of Google, Popeyes, Lyft, and Philadelphia Cream Cheese.

There are some twists and turns to the tale of how this project wound up here today. Brand New is a collection of opinions on brand identity work. Sometimes, in the course of covering brand news, a logo will appear without much of an identity behind it and there won’t be enough going on to warrant an entire review. That might mean that the project gets bumped down to the much less in-depth Noted column. Or if there’s truly just a logo, it might be relegated to a spot in the Spotted category. But occasionally, in particularly notable cases, the decision has been made to sit and wait for more of the identity to unfurl over time.

The logo for GUT was designed by &walsh in 2019. The GUT logo was all the company had to go on for five years, and – eye catching as it was – the logo alone didn’t warrant a full review. But in those five years, GUT has added about 500 more employees and expanded across the globe, earning clients and accolades in the process. So in 2023, GUT brought back &walsh to finish the job and develop a full identity based on their original 2019 logo work. It’s this combination of old-new logo and new-new typefaces, illustrations, and animations that we’ll be reviewing today.

Read the full article at Brand New

Window Shopping
New Logo and Identity for Shop by Porto Rocha
Reviewed Sep. 26, 2023

The brand we’re discussing today slowly emerged from a swirling miasma of secondary features on a larger parent platform in a way that defies a succinct summary, so please bear with me as I attempt to guide both you (and myself) back through all the various evolutionary steps that led us to where we are now.

Shopify the company was founded by Tobias Lütke and Scott Lake in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada in 2006. Initially reliant on third-party payment systems, in 2013 Shopify partnered with Stripe to bring their payment processing in-house with the launch of Shopify Payments. A few years later in 2017, a new feature was added to Shopify Payments called Shopify Pay which allowed users to store their shipping and payment data in the app for quicker shopping. This move also introduced the most recognizable touchpoint for the company, the purple one-click checkout button. Alongside this feature, a new mobile app called Arrive was created to let customers track the shipping status of their Shopify purchases.

In 2020, Shopify Pay was rebranded as Shop Pay and the Arrive app as Shop, bringing the purchase and order tracking features under the umbrella of a single app. That app and the ecosystem of elements supporting it in the online shopping space is what Brooklyn, NY-based Porto Rocha rebranded in September of 2023.

Read the full article at Brand New

Diamond in the Fluff
New Brand and Identity for Marshmallow by Ragged Edge
Reviewed Sep. 14, 2023

Established in London, UK, in 2017, Marshmallow is a digital-only car insurance provider with a focus on expats and immigrants, a group that tends to be targeted with higher rates than UK natives. To date they’ve sold over 342,000 policies and paid out £66m in claims. Back in 2021, Marshmallow raised £68 million on a £1 billion valuation. In that same year they introduced a new brand and identity designed by Output, which was covered on Brand New. This most recent revamp of the Marshmallow brand was done by London-based Ragged Edge.

Read the full article at Brand New

Intrinsic (Ch)arms
New Logo and Identity for Intrinsic by Pentagram
Reviewed Aug. 15, 2023

Founded in 2021 as a graduate of Alphabet’s moonshot project incubator X, Intrinsic is a company headed by the British tech entrepreneur Wendy Tan White that aims to democratize industrial robotics. Building on the momentum of declining sensor hardware costs and advancements in computer vision, Intrinsic wants to use artificial intelligence to make software that more developers can use and robots that can adapt to a wider range of environments. As a demonstration of their capabilities, last year Intrinsic provided machine learning to drive four robotic arms used to construct the Swiss architectural installation Semiramis. The company has also recently announced a software product, Flowstate. At time of writing the software is still in closed beta but promises to “catalyze a shift toward software and AI-enabled robotics.” I filled out the beta tester application to the best of my ability, which means I have no further information about Flowstate.

With only tech demos and an unpublished product to build a brand around, much of the work done by London, UK-based Pentagram partners Luke Powell and Jody Hudson-Powell deals with industrial robots in the abstract.

Read the full article at Brand New

If It Ain’t Broke, Disrupt It
New Identity for TBWA by Plau, Fuze, and In-house
Reviewed Jun. 22, 2023

Founded in Paris, France in 1970 and headquartered in New York since 1993, TBWA is a global collective of ad agencies that has spent the last 40 years helping shape the landscape of commercial art. In that time they’ve garnered their share of awards from organizations like AdWeek and Fast Company, but more impressive is that many of their campaigns have crossed over from the world of advertising to become pop-culture phenomenons in their own right. Apple’s 1984 Super Bowl ad? Crash Bandicoot yelling at Mario through a megaphone? iPod silhouettes? The Taco Bell chihuahua? The Jack in the Box mascot, Jack Box? All TBWA. Today they operate in over 40 countries and maintain a portfolio of high profile clients such as Adidas, Gatorade, Apple, McDonalds, and Nissan.

The brand refresh we’re looking at today was led by TBWA’s in-house design department, Design by Disruption (DxD), with type system developed by Plau Design and 3D illustrations by Fuze Image.

Read the full article at Brand New

A Sound Approach
New Logo and Identity for Lobe by FAY
Reviewed Jun. 2, 2023

Lobe is a spatial sound studio founded in Vancouver, Canada, in 2020 that serves both as a place to create and present immersive audio experiences, such as art installations and wellness events. It is the first such studio in North America to utilize the 4DSOUND system, an array of speakers embedded in the ceiling and floors that “project Sound Holograms; sonic vibrations articulated through controlled dimension, position, movement, resolution and interaction within space. This renders vivid listening areas without a ‘sweetspot’ in which sound is not heard as coming from speakers, rather, sounds appear in space as entities with a tangible physical presence, depth and dimensionality,” which I’m just going to have to take their word for. Lobe’s brand identity was designed by Brooklyn, NY-based graphic design and creative technology studio FAY.

Read the full article at Brand New

Sweet Beams Are Made of This
New Logo and Identity for The Beams by Only
Reviewed May. 25, 2023

Established in October 2022, The Beams is a nightclub and event space housed in a reclaimed sugar factory warehouse on the Royal Docks in East London. It boasts a 55,000 square foot mix of indoor and outdoor industrial space, which it uses to host music, filming, photo shoots, cultural events, exhibitions, and fashion shows.

This is the second venue opened as a collaboration between Broadwick Live and LWE. The first was Printworks, which opened in 2017 and was previously covered on Brand New. The Beams is both a spiritual and literal successor to Printworks, which shut down on May 1st, 2023 with tentative plans to reopen in a new location in 2026.

The situation isn’t unique to Printworks. Between the pandemic, rising electricity costs, and Brexit, London has been losing nightclubs at an alarming rate. Since 2019, nearly one third of all UK nightclubs have been shuttered. With Printworks out of commission and the field sparcer than it’s been in ages, The Beams has emerged to fill the hole left in both its owner’s portfolios and the wider London nightclub scene.

To design the identity of The Beams, Broadwick and LWE returned to Manchester, UK brand agency Only, who also designed the identity for Printworks.

Read the full article at Brand New

Elodie and Harmony
New Brand and Identity for Elodie by Koto
Reviewed Apr. 4, 2023

Founded 2019 in Venice, CA, by Riot Games alumni Christina Norman and David Banks, Elodie Games is a game development studio. It’s difficult to get more specific than that, because at the time of writing the studio has yet to publish any games. That hasn’t stopped them from garnering attention in the industry, with $5 million in initial funding in 2020 and an additional $32.5 million in series A investment in 2021. The company is focused on developing cross-platform titles – multiplayer games that can be played together regardless of the console used to play them. To that end, in February 2023 Elodie announced that an as-of-yet untitled co-op action RPG following this design philosophy is in the works. That same month Elodie introduced a new logo, identity, and set of characters designed by Koto.

Read the full article at Brand New

Milk it For Almonds Worth
New Logo and Identity for Marin Living Foods by The Working Assembly
Reviewed Mar. 7, 2023

Founded in 2012 in Marin County, California (from which they take their name), Marin Living Foods produces small batch organic almond milks in a variety of flavors using only quality ingredients that are 100% organic and sourced in California. Founded by chef Gaina Lieu, its almonds are in a raw, preservative free, sprouted state before making their almond milk drinks with flavors like Berry Goji, Cacao Maca, and Vanilla Chia. On March 1, 2023, Marin Living Foods launched a new logo and identity designed by New York-based branding and creative agency The Working Assembly.

Read the full article at Brand New

Let’s Talk About Lex, Baby
New Logo and Identity for Lex by &Walsh
Reviewed Jan. 31, 2023

Dating back to 2017, Lex is a social media app catering to LGBTQIA+ people looking to build their community by posting personal ads. The business was begun in 2017 by Kell Rakowski as an Instagram account called simply @personals. In 2019, after two years, over 60,000 followers, and about 10,000 ads, Rakowski evolved the account into a standalone app and introduced the new name, Lex, an abbreviation of Lexicon. On January 26, 2023, Lex launched a new logo and identity designed by Brooklyn, NY-based creative agency . The redesign coincided with a UI and UX overhaul of the app and a shift in focus.

Read the full article at Brand New

One Size doesn’t Fit All
New Logo and Identity for Son of a Tailor by Ragged Edge
Reviewed Jan. 3, 2023

Founded in 2014, Son of a Tailor is a made-to-order clothing business based out of Copenhagen with the goal of reducing the waste of the fast fashion industry through the manufacture and sale of high-quality, high-end shirts. The ordering process is unique in the online shopping world. Instead of picking from preset categories like small, medium, or large – customers are prompted to enter their height, weight, age, shoe size, and chest-to-waist ratio. These parameters are then used to algorithmically generate a top unique to each buyer’s fit and build. The new identity was designed by London branding agency Ragged Edge in March of 2022.

Read the full article at Brand New

T∞ C∞l for Sch∞l
New Logo and Identity for Outschool by Geist
Reviewed Oct. 4, 2022

Founded in San Francisco in 2015, Outschool is a remote learning platform connecting independent instructors with K-12 students. The community-driven platform has an emphasis on small class sizes, personal instruction, and boasts over 140,000 classes and clubs. Initially conceived as a tech-forward take on homeschooling, the company is not shy about crediting the closure of schools during the COVID lockdowns with their success, which took them from 80,000 students in the first half of March 2020 to roughly 1,000,000 students across 183 countries today.

Their rapid growth has attracted investments from the likes of startup accelerators Y Combinator, Lightspeed, and Tiger Global Management to earn them a $3 billion valuation as of 2021. The new brand and identity was designed by Portland, Oregon-based Geist.

Read the full article at Brand New

All Sommerro Long
New Logo and Identity for Sommerro by Bielke&Yang
Reviewed Sep. 26, 2022

Established earlier this month in September 2022 after three and a half years of development, Sommerro is a high-end hotel and wellness retreat located in the Norwegian capital of Oslo. More specifically, the hotel is located in the former Oslo Lysverker building, which served as the headquarters for the city’s electric company from 1930 to 1934. The destination hotel boasts “a hub of restaurants and bars, a library, a small private cinema, and the city’s first rooftop pool, sauna and terrace.” The identity is designed by Oslo-based Bielke&Yang.

Read the full article at Brand New

The Revolution will be Satellized
New Logo and Identity for SATREV by Symbol Studio
Reviewed Jun. 23, 2022

Established in 2016 as SatRevolution, SatRev is a Polish company specializing in the development and operation of cubesats: nanosatellites that NASA carries up to space as secondary payloads on visits to the International Space Station.

SatRev uses these small satellites to provide photography gathered from low-earth orbit to insurance agencies, agriculturalists, city planners, militaries, and other entities that require detailed and current pics of the planet. They also operate LabSat, a scientific platform for in-orbit experiments developed by Polish academic institutions such as the Wrocław University of Science and Technology.

The new brand for SatRev launched in October of 2021 and was designed by Gliwice, Poland-based Symbol Studio.

Read the full article at Brand New

You’re Gonna Feel a Slight Pinch
New Logo and Identity for GSK by Wolff Olins
Reviewed Jun. 16, 2022

The product of a myriad of mergers dating back to the 19th century, the modern iteration of the British multi-national pharmaceutical conglomerate GSK began in 2000 with the merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham. The world’s sixth largest biotech company, they are best known for their work in vaccine production, prescription medicines, and (until recently) consumer health products. If you’ve brushed with Aquafresh or had a malaria vaccine, you’re familiar with their work. The new brand for GSK launched in June of 2022 and was designed by British ad- and identity-consultancy group Wolff Olins.

Read the full article at Brand New

Across the Board
New Identity for 2021 FIDE 2021 World Chess Championship by Morillas
Reviewed Jun. 9, 2022

In 1886 Wilhelm Steinitz and Johannes Zukertort, at the time the two greatest chess masters in the world, held the first World Chess Championship. Steinitz emerged victorious and was crowned the inaugural champion. This set the template for the early contests, with matches arranged one-on-one between titans of the sport. To raise a challenge against the reigning champion cost $10,000, the rough equivalent of $300,000 today. This required challengers to secure the financial backing of the chess spectating elite – the winner of the title matches, and all of their patrons, would split the purse. The loser and all of their backers received nothing. This organized, high-stakes gambling made the early title matches a rare and dramatic event, and the crown only passed hands four times in the span of 60 years.

That might’ve still been the format today if not for the death of the fourth world champion, Alexander Alekhine, in 1946. Without a reigning champion to challenge, the title was set to die with Alekhine unless a new system was devised. Enter FIDE, the International Chess Federation. A French players’ union which had been hosting national tournaments for decades, they were able to propose a solution in the form of a bracketed tournament of eight ex-champions and rising stars from around the globe, the best players of their time. In 1948, two year’s after Alekhine’s death, Mikhail Botvinnik became the first world champion under FIDE jurisdiction.

While there have been splits and reorganizations through the years, FIDE remains the global governing body on crowning the World Champion of Chess in a global tournament held every two years. The identity for the 2021 FIDE World Championship Tournament was designed by Barcelona-based Morillas Branding.

Read the full article at Brand New