design leader: White Bear Studio’s Kelly Mackenzie

Kelly Mackenzie is co-founder and creative director of White Bear Studio, whose clients include the dairies Freshways and Tom Parker Creamery and secondhand site Thrift+.

Design

What would your monograph be called?

How to Be Real, Not Robotic: Why Humanity Beats Perfection for Connection.

What recent design work made you a bit jealous?

Auge Design’s work for Italian drinks brand Nazionale – beautiful, premium, and elegant in design, while simultaneously being playful and full of joy. A single-minded and distinctive approach that brought a smile to my face, and a hint of jealousy.

Auge Design’s work for Nazionale

What’s an unusual place you get inspiration from?

Well, first I can tell you where I never get inspiration – sitting at my desk, on my phone, or in a briefing about the very thing I need inspiration for.

It always seems to strike unexpectedly, in the gaps between doing “the things.” Maybe on a walk, a run, very often in the shower, and most likely when I’m listening to music.

Name something that is brilliantly designed, but overlooked.

The banana. It comes in its own biodegradable wrapper. It protects the product naturally. Its colour signals ripeness and acts as a real-time freshness indicator. There’s zero plastic, zero waste, and it’s 100% compostable.

What object in your studio best sums up your taste?

It has to be Mr Bingo’s Don’t Forget to Have Fun gravestone, which has sat proudly on my desk for the past four years. Not just a beautiful collectable from an artist I really admire – and who never ceases to make me smile – but also a much-needed reminder and mantra for our industry.

We can take ourselves too seriously in the creative world – getting hung up on clients not making the choices we want, projects running over budget, or losing pitches. All valid concerns.

However, at the end of the day, we’re not doctors. No-one is going to die on our watch or as a result of the choices we make.

We’re part of a beautiful, colourful, playful industry and the least we can do is keep perspective, have a chuckle, stay curious, and connect with our teams not just over work but over the light-hearted stuff too.

Kelly Mackenzie’s Mr Bingo headstone

Leadership

What feedback felt brutal at the time, but turned out to be useful?

Firstly, feedback is a gift and always an opportunity for self-reflection. To be very honest, I recently received feedback from one of our ACDs that completely changed the way I viewed internal creative meetings.

For 10 years, we’d been holding what we called internal crits every morning with the design team.

The feedback I received was that the team often saw these as the time to present work to me for “axing,” not the collaborative working sessions I had intended.

Designers felt their ideas weren’t finished enough to share, when in reality what I wanted to see was scrappy doodles, sparks of inspiration, and kernels of great ideas.

Since then, we’ve renamed the morning sessions brainstorms, and immediately noticed a change in the dynamic. Designers now show up with unpolished work-in-progress to get feedback and thoughts from the whole team. It’s been a small but beautiful evolution.

Initially it felt hard to take feedback on something I thought had worked well for 10 years.

But in my role, it’s rare to get honest feedback – which I love to get. When you do get it, you need to take it seriously and look at things from different perspectives.

What’s an underappreciated skill that design leaders need?

People skills are critical, both with your team and with your clients.

Internally, leaders need to understand the nuances of getting the best out of their teams. What works for one person doesn’t work for everyone. Knowing how individuals like to receive feedback is essential, and knowing when to support versus when to push is critical.

Equally, putting yourself in your client’s shoes matters. That design detail might mean the world to your team, but what is its actual impact on your client’s business?

Leading with impact and empathy helps you create work that is meaningful and drives change. Leading with design for design’s sake is just navel-gazing – and our industry certainly doesn’t need more of that.

What keeps you up at night?

Apart from my kids, I’d say two things. One, finances and pipeline – the unsexy side that keeps your business not just ticking over but also growing. Two, creativity. I often wake up with ideas and jot them down beside my bed.

At night, like many of us, I do a lot of processing from the day. I find myself asking, have we been single-minded enough with this idea? Is it truly distinctive?

Night-time often gives me perspective as the creative percolates in my brain.

What trait is non-negotiable in new hires?

Attitude! You can teach skills, you can’t teach someone out of having a bad attitude.

Complete this sentence, “I wish more clients…”

…saw agencies as true business partners, not just the last stop-gap to bringing a brand to life. Strategy, design thinking and execution perform at their best when the agency is treated as a genuine business partner – with transparent commercials, shared KPI, and open communication.

That way, we can really understand how to move the needle together and create real business transformation.

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“Everything and nothing has changed” – Jayne Connell on 25 years of Interstate

Jayne Connell’s first experience of the design industry was a student placement at Carroll, Dempsey & Thirkell. “They had this stunning office just off Chancery Lane where everything was designed within an inch of its life,” she remembers.

“Each day you’d put out your lay-out pad, with a black pen on the side. And there had to be nothing else on the desk – you weren’t allowed a cup or anything.”

She thrived in that perfectionist environment, coming back to work there after she graduated. Connell went on to work at Carter Wong, and was later part of the agency merger that created Futurebrand, where she rose to associate director.

But after her husband, Nick Downes, started his own agency from the couple’s kitchen table, Connell left to join him. She is now director of strategy at Interstate, where she has spent the past 25 years building a culture that combines sharp commercial thinking with creative excellence.

Interstate’s work for F1, featured in its new book

The agency has worked a lot in the motorsport world, with car brands like McLaren, Lamborghini and Chinese company Nio, as well as governing bodies Formula E and the FIA, which runs Formula One. Away from the automotive sector, Interstate has also worked with Google, Unilever and the NHS.

As the studio publishes a new book celebrating its 25th year, we spoke with Jayne about her career, the current state of branding, and what she wishes she’d known when she and Downes started their own studio.

Were you always interested in the business side of the industry as well as the creative side?

Yes, I always had a business mind as well as a graphic mind.

At Carroll, Dempsey & Thirkell we were sort of kept in the back, but at Carter Wong they would get you involved. I remember being invited to a meeting at Woolworth’s, and being petrified. I didn’t know what to wear to a client meeting.

But I must have passed the test. I know a lot of design creatures don’t want to do that sort of thing, but I was ambitious and I wanted to prove my worth.

A bookshelf in the Interstate studio

Working on Formula One opened my eyes to a lot of stuff. We spent a lot of time sitting with incredibly influential business people, like Bernie Ecclestone, who are tough, direct and very demanding.

But by then, I could stand my ground. I got shouted at a lot, but I learned to not be a “yes person.”

That’s an important skill isn’t it – to know when to challenge clients?

It doesn’t feel great sometimes, and obviously we have to pay the bills.

But when you push your team for excellence, and then you turn around and say, “The client likes this idea and we’re just going to go with it,” then the whole team gets disenfranchised.

It doesn’t get us excited. And nine times out of ten, it’s done us a favour to say exactly what we think. We’ve lost projects by doing it, but often the client has come back later for something else, because we made an impression.

More and more, I believe the only way we’re going to get a voice is by having an opinion.

What are the biggest changes you’ve seen in the industry in the past 25 years?

It’s like everything’s changed and nothing’s changed, because it’s about people.

There are so many brilliant agencies. We all do brilliant work. It comes down to relationships. It’s how you build trust with your client, so they come back to work with you when they move between companies.

A big part of business development now is what we call transcend. At the end of a project, we ask anyone who has worked on it, what else could we do, based on all the things you have learned about this company, and this sector?

Our work is not about indulgently beautifying things – our teams know their stuff. And so we’ve extended quite a bit of our work, with clients like the Premier League, by suggesting what the next piece might be.

Interstate’s work for Bapco Energies

How do you build this trust with clients?

We’d never dare tell them that we know more than them, because we definitely don’t. But we use our skills to ask the right questions, get into their mindset ,and understand the business, so we can do an excellent job of wrapping that in some form of an experience.

And you know, return on investment is a tough one within branding. If you redesign a packet of biscuits, and it sells more on the shelf the next day, great.

With branding, it’s reputation management. You’re not going to know if it’s worked for years.

So we have to create our own return on investment, to keep checking, are we doing the best job for this client? And I think we drive that into our client services team and into our creative team.

Communication is the biggest thing. The whole team owns the client, so pick up the phone. Go and have those conversations.

How do you think about the balance between the different teams that make up an agency?

Listening to everyone’s voices is really important, from production to client services. Creatives can’t rule the roost.

I love creatives dearly, and I was one. I can see the ones off in the corner who haven’t listened to the last five minutes of a meeting because they’re onto an idea.

And sometimes that’s fab, but sometimes they’re missing some important parts of the strategy.

How do you see the current state of branding?

Again, it’s all changed but nothing’s changed. There’s a shitload of channels now and so many ways you can express something.

But you’ve still got to come up with a great idea, and you’ve got to be able to justify it to the client. That’s the bit I think will be the creative currency going forward.

Interstate’s work for the Premier League

With ChatGPT, you can ask it to come up with a strategy, and it will churn something out. But you still need human understanding to bring it all together.

We bang on a lot about the fact that a brand isn’t a logo, but it’s true. It’s an approach, a personality, a set of guiding criteria to make a lot of judgments, one of which will be the visual expression.

We’re debating at the moment where the value goes. How much will a client pay for strategy, for identity, for campaigns, for production?

We still think the value is in the big idea, in coming up with something that someone else hasn’t.

Do you think the role of strategy has changed? Has it become overcomplicated?

I don’t like the idea of strategists sitting in a room doing strategy. For me, that’s not a creative process. You need the creative mind, the UX mind to feed into it. A good strategist can say, “You’ve got something there. I know how to mix it in.”

You’ve got to have a sense of how that brand strategy is going to be interpreted into a creative world. I think some strategies are quite weak because they’re done in isolation and then it’s, “Here’s the strategy. Now turn that into creative…”

It comes down to listening and relationships again. The best strategy comes from asking the right question to your client.

Is there a piece of work the studio has done that really sums up the Interstate approach?

Probably the work for Nio, this amazing electric car company in China founded by William Li.

He hired Martin Leach, the ex-president of Ford Europe, who came to us and said, “I haven’t got a name. I haven’t got a car. I haven’t got a design. I just have a wish and that was it.”

Interstate’s work for Nio Sport

We had to build the brand story and the proof points before anything else. So we said, let’s start by sponsoring a winning motorsport team. And we created Nio Sport, with lots of branding, visuals, film, websites, events and goodness knows what else.

When they launched the car 18 months later, another agency did the actual automotive brand, but it all started with the work we did.

What did you learn working on that project?

They practised something called “vision action upgrade,” which is a business approach where you have an idea, you action it really quickly, and then you look at where it needs upgrading.

It petrified us to start with, because for designers it can feel like a bit of a nightmare. We’re used to checking things to death before they go out – the spelling, the word spaces, the colour, the motion edit.

But we came to love it. It tested us on all levels, but it keeps things moving. You just need the right people in the room who don’t think, “Oh that’s a mistake.” They think, “How can we improve it?”

Interstate’s work for Nio Sport, featured in the new book

Compared to your days as a young designer, how has creative leadership changed?

I think historically, creative agencies were fairly terrible at doing appraisals. You got the odd random coffee somewhere and then you realised that was your appraisal.

And there was this whole thing about focusing on people’s weaknesses or things they didn’t want to do. We threw that away quite early on here.

For a middleweight designer to become a senior, they shouldn’t have to start presenting to clients. Sometimes we can see that every bone in someone’s body doesn’t want to do that.

So how can we play to someone’s strengths, so they can still be a senior?

Interstate’s work for F1, featured in its new book

Another key thing is to recognise that there is a difference between a design mind, a creative mind, and a creative technologist mind.

You have pure graphic designers, although they don’t teach that as much anymore. There’s a creative mind, which is a lot more conceptual. They think in stories, but they can’t necessarily design something. And then you have the people who are great at the UX/UI stuff.

It’s about helping guide people in their careers, especially if they they think they are one thing, but we think they’d be better focusing on something else.

What is one thing you wish you’d known when starting Interstate 25 years ago?

I wish I had thought more about the importance – and the challenge – of building a leadership team for the future.

It takes time, patience and instinct to recognise the people who share your vision and values. Finding those like-minded business souls early on is essential, positioning them to carry the business forward, especially in an ever-changing political and economic landscape.

Then comes the difficult part – the boardroom conversations, the consequences when things go wrong, the promises that never materialise. Around the table, you’re friends, but you’re also bound by responsibility – and that balance can be hard to maintain.

If you run a creative agency, you’ve found the ones who can make an idea work. But when you start searching for your next generation of leaders, you’re looking for that rare individual who can hold both imagination and responsibility in the same hand, and not drop either.

The new Interstate book
The new Interstate book packaging
The new Interstate book

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NVIDIA soars amid AI boom in Interbrand’s Best Global Brands list

Interbrand has published its Best Global Brands list, amid warnings that AI is upending the sector.

The 2025 list ranks 100 companies based on “the financial performance of the branded products or services, the role the brand plays in purchase decisions, and the brand’s competitive strength.”

This year’s top five are the same as last year’s, and in the same order, with Apple leading the way, followed by Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Samsung.

But below that, there was a sense of change, with 12 new entrants, the highest number since the index began in 2000. These include BlackRock financial services, UNIQLO, Monster and Shopify.

“This year’s ranking reflects how brand leaders are moving quickly to adapt to competitive challenges and shifting market dynamics to position their brands for growth,” Interbrand CEO Gonzalo Brujó wrote. “These shifting realities have led to a radical shift in the shape and make up of our global ranking.”

Big winners while others struggle

Computer chip manufacturer Nvidia recorded the highest year-on-year increase in brand valuation ever recorded, up 116% and shooting from 36th in last year’s list to 15th.

Compared to last year, YouTube (13) was up a huge 61%, Netflix (28) rose 42%, Uber (64) was up 38%, and Nintendo (53) jumped 35%.

“To the two traditional ways by which people have known the world, faith and reason, AI adds a third one.”

Another big mover was Instagram, which moved into the top ten, after a 27% increase in brand valuation that took it from 15th to 8th.

It reflects a positive verdict on Instagram’s parent company Meta, with Facebook (19) up 18%, and WhatsApp named on the Brands to Watch list, made up of companies with, “strong potential to enter our Best Global Brands ranking in future years.”

“Brands that are innovating across industries and entering new arenas, building cultural relevance, and investing in long-term brand strategy are outperforming even the outperformers,” the report states.

Nike, whose recent struggles have made it an oft-used example of a brand losing its way, tumbled out the top 20, dropping 26% and from 14th to 23rd spot.

Tesla dropped 35%, from 12th to 25th place, perhaps linked to founder Elon Musk’s controversial role on the US political stage. There were also big falls for Intel (71) down 42%, Gucci (69) down 35%, and Nissan (82) down 33%.

AI changes the game

Unsurprisingly, AI looms large over this year’s ranking. “Digitally enabled services and the rise of AI are establishing new winners faster than ever,” the report explains.

It quotes from The Age of AI, a book authored by statesman Henry Kissinger, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and computer scientist Daniel Huttenlocher, which states, “To the two traditional ways by which people have known the world, faith and reason, AI adds a third one.”

Interestingly despite the scale of disruption caused by AI, the report suggests that its rise “doesn’t necessarily create new challenges for brand leaders, but it accelerates and exacerbates the existing ones – exponentially.”

The report predicts the “collapse of the consumer journey” where customers will “inevitably delegate some purchase decisions to agents.”

“AI is already changing our exploration and understanding of reality – and, therefore, our choices,” the authors write.

“While brands do not face an imminent risk of extinction, they do face the prospect of accelerated selection. There will still be many names, logos and labels out there – but in time, fewer will be truly capable of influencing human choice.”

This will create a two-tier brand world, where brands that impact the “choices we care more deeply about” will continue to play a “meaningful role,” while others will fall out of consideration.

“The dividing line that will emerge will sit between what we see as disposable – and what we deem indispensable,” the report suggests.

“Brands that are relegated to the disposable will exist in a context predicated on product, price, and algorithmic optimisation, with little control over competitive barriers or stability of demand.

“Conversely, those brands that are powerful meaning systems will unlock extraordinary competitive advantages. The companies that win are those that will address our faith and reason – and create profound relationships with their customers that are immune to the influence of agents.”

In praise of focus

Alongside AI adoption and an ability to maintain a sense of meaning, the report also praised those companies which are “ uncompromisingly singular about the unmet human needs they address.”

Brands like Uniqlo, Shopify and Booking.com, “are not constrained by categories or touchpoints but take their experiences to places and arenas where those unmet needs can create value. They make moves that continuously reaffirm their place in their customers’ lives.

“In this new age, singularity of focus applied to a plurality of arenas is what unlocks extraordinary value, as shown by the performance of multi-arena brands.”

Among the companies dropping out of the list from last year were KFC, Heineken, Ford and Lloyds Bank, which was one of the 2024 list’s biggest risers.

The 12 new entrants in this year’s list were:

BlackRock (31)
Booking.com (32)
Qualcomm (39)
GE Aerospace (44)
Uniqlo (47)
Dell (51)
Schneider Electric (65)
Monster (70)
Nasdaq (85)
John Deere (88)
BYD (90)
Shopify (99)

You can download the full report here.

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Type-led Sky Sports redesign aims to “put the love back” into the brand

Sky Sports has launched a new visual identity which is designed to move away from sports-specific sub-brands and attract new audiences.

The new look was launched at the start of the football season this summer, and was also used for its recent Ryder Cup coverage. It will roll out across other sports, from Formula One and darts to cricket, boxing and tennis, over the next 12 months.

“Sky Sports is a beast, so it’s an ever-evolving piece of work,” says Alex Haley, Sky’s group creative director of brand design.

Sky Sports last rebranded in 2017, when it shifted towards a channel architecture built around different sports, like Sky Sports Premier League and Sky Sports Cricket.

“We wanted to create identities for each of those channels, so we had different colour palettes and we created new typefaces,” explains Ceri Sampson, Sky’s group executive creative director of brand and design.

“They were almost their own little sub-brands, but it almost worked too well, and the success of those genre channels was to the detriment of Sky Sports itself. We wanted to re-establish the main brand and put the love back into Sky Sports.”

Another element of the brief was to attract a broader audience, particularly the under-35 age group. Much has been made of sport having to adopt more of the design cues of the entertainment world, as consumption habits change and the importance of short social clips increases.

But Haley says the Sky Sports team needed to balance that with what its channels do best.

“There is so much choice in sports now, and so many formats,” he says. “But for us, live is still king. It’s the centrepiece of the experience, but of course everything that wraps around live has become more relevant, to engage fans beyond the 90 minutes, or the in-ring action.”

“We always want people to watch live, because that’s the best and purest experience. But the way to get them there perhaps isn’t as traditional as it was 15 years ago.”

For the Sky Sports team, the challenge was not just to create consistency across its different sports, formats and touchpoints, but also to create an experience worth buying.

“Unlike the BBC or ITV, we’re selling a product,” Haley says. “So the branding needs to help justify the amount people are spending.”

That, Sampson explains, helped develop the new brand positioning – “Welcome to the show” – which he says underscores the “value Sky Sports adds.”

“Some broadcasters just rock up and point a few cameras at a sports event,” he says. “But that’s not us. It’s always been about really premium additions, from the best commentators, to the best cameras, to the best brand and graphic design package that sits around any programme.”

This focus on presentation influenced the evolution of the Sky Sports logo. “We deconstructed it to create what we’ve called the stage device, where the roundel becomes a vehicle to represent the stories we’re telling,” Haley says.

The new Sky Sports visual identity, with the logo roundel used as a framing device

They’ve also removed the logo’s glass sheen, which Sampson says had become “a cold barrier working against our positioning of welcoming everybody.” (The Sky master logo has also recently had its sheen removed).

“The actual proportions and everything are the same, but the textures within have changed,” Sampson says.

This has opened up different and more interesting visual treatments. One of Sky’s car parks in west London was wrapped with an image of a Formula One car speeding over the new logo.

“It has tire marks all over it, and that’s something we wouldn’t have been able to do before,” Haley says. He says the team is relishing “dialling up” this more emotional, fan-friendly side of the brand alongside the “premium experience and innovation we’re famous for.”

One of the biggest parts of the new identity is a new typeface, Sky Sports Sans, which comes in five weights and was developed with the F37 foundry. This replaces the six sports-specific fonts created as part of the 2017 rebrand.

“Each had its own tone and visual quirks, but they shared some key limitations – they were all-caps, only available in a single weight, and each was a modified version of an external typeface,” F37’s Rick Banks explains. “This created brand inconsistency and limited Sky’s creative control.”

Sampson says the new typeface is designed to be “bold and iconic” and creates consistency across on-screen graphics, digital and advertising, while retaining flexibility.

“We didn’t want to be tied down to one execution of that typeface,” he says. “Different sports have different personalities, and even within sports, The Hundred is very different to test match cricket.

“So we want that font to flex, and things like the motion principles of how we animate it will change from sport to sport.”

Banks says Sky Sports Sans is built for “warmth, clarity and versatility” with “angular cuts, sharp terminals and pointed vertices” referencing dynamism and energy.

And Haley says they were inspired too by magazine covers. “We wanted the brand to feel more editorial in its design, and the confidence of the font is very robust.”

He says they paid particular attention to the numbers, because of the central role they play in sports coverage, from the constant on-screen presence of a football score to the celebratory moments of a six in cricket, or a 180 in darts.

“We had a lot of frank conversations internally,” Haley says. “Some people were a bit nervous that we were pushing it too far.”

To ensure every part of the brand expression is considered, Sky has some pretty specialist creative roles.

For example, Haley explains, its talent creative director, Francesca Gray-Walkinshaw, manages every aspect of how talent shows up on screen, “from styling, to production, to training around how we express our brand values.”

This matters, he says, because in a show like Super Sunday, Sky’s flagship football offering, around 50% of the transmission will be talent contextualising and discussing the action.

“And so from our point of view, having someone who is able to understand the personalities, the presentation, and what we want to achieve with the brand, is really interesting,” Haley says.

“It’s quite a unique part of what branding means in this space, beyond the typical stuff of identities and toolkits.”

The new Sky Sports visual identity, featuring Sky Sports Sans
The new Sky Sports visual identity, featuring Sky Sports Sans
The new Sky Sports visual identity, featuring Sky Sports Sans
The new Sky Sports visual identity
The new Sky Sports visual identity
The new Sky Sports visual identity

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Planning Unit’s HYDA Helmets rebrand rides surfing’s changing tides

SIMBA Surf had been leading the conversation around surf safety ever since they launched their first product, the Sentinel 1 helmet, in 2020.

However, as the brand grew and the company prepared to launch a new generation of surf helmets, the team realised their identity hadn’t kept up with their ambition.

Ahead of a new product launch, the team tore up the old playbook. Working alongside London-based brand and design studio Planning Unit, SIMBA Surf rebranded as HYDA Helmets, introducing a considered visual system and a purpose-built ecommerce experience alongside the new name.

“The investment team had decided the brand needed a little bit of new life,” says Greg Keeling, VP of market development. “So much attention had gone into the product and the new line – and into getting it out into the world – but very little into the brand that held it all together.”

Planning Unit’s brand for HYDA

Along with launching HYDA into its next chapter, the new identity had to respond to a cultural shift in the world of surfing. For decades, helmets had been a hard sell in surf culture. Older, more conservative surfers saw them as unnecessary, a break from tradition. But a new wave of younger surfers – raised on bike and skate culture – view helmets as tools to improve their craft by pushing their limits.

SIMBA Surf’s earlier positioning had leaned on safety messaging, but as Keeling explains, the team deliberately shifted the focus. The goal wasn’t to talk about protection, but progression, giving surfers the confidence to charge harder.

“We wanted to celebrate the technology and design behind the helmets – to give them real shelf presence – while keeping the brand authentic; something made by surfers, for surfers,” says Keeling.

Even in rebuilding the brand for a modern audience, Planning Unit didn’t abandon its visual history. The logo of SIMBA Surf held a trident within it, a motif which the team carried forward to the ‘Y’ in the wordmark.

The trident within SIMBA Surf’s logo was reimagined by Planning Unit for HYDA

The trident is linked to ancient gods of the sea, representing dominance over the ocean. In modern surf culture, it has come to symbolise strength, courage and protection.

The wordmark was custom-drawn for legibility, unity and balance while adding a subtle emphasis to the trident. This combines with a “shelter-shaped ‘A’ that represents HYDA’s desire to always protect and care for those who use its products,” says Planning Unit co-founder Nick Hard.

The letterforms were intentionally crafted to be simple. “We didn’t want the identity to feel overcomplicated – it had to be confident, instantly recognisable, and legible even in motion and in water,” adds Hard.

The typographic palette is strengthened by the addition of Söhne Halbfett and Söhne Buch, chosen for their clean, no-nonsense construction and strong legibility in high-visibility settings. Elsewhere, Mikro from Letters from Sweden brings a technical flavour.

To expand the visual system, the team drew the trident out of the logo and evolved it into an ownable brand mark. It now forms wave-like patterns that move fluidly across both static and motion assets, and extends into product design – appearing on HYDA’s latest helmet line, Coanda.

Alongside building a coherent visual system, the team wanted the product itself to be desirable, supported by packaging that elevates it from pure utility to a design object in its own right.

“We looked at what everyone else was doing in terms of packaging and decided to do the opposite. Most boxes were white or plain cardboard – we went completely black, added patterns, and cut window openings so the colour of the helmets pops through,” says Planning Unit co-founder Jeff Knowles.

“One of the helmets is a bright neon yellow, so when it sits inside the black box, that flash of colour becomes part of the design.”

Planning Unit’s packaging for HYDA

Each design decision – across product, packaging, identity and website – grew out of a fast, collaborative rhythm between HYDA and Planning Unit. The process stayed light on hierarchy and heavy on exchange, allowing ideas to build momentum as they passed between teams.

“I’ve worked with big agencies where you go through four layers before you ever sit down with a designer. For me, that’s yesterday’s model,” says Keeling.

“You get pitched by one team, handed off to ideators in the next, and then to designers in round four or five. It’s miserable; you lose the original vision.

“What we created with these guys was the opposite – a forum where ideas were shared openly, and whenever something clicked, we all knew instantly, ‘That’s it,’ and ran with it.”

That agile, shared process has resulted in a brand that has resonated immediately.

“It was a total slam dunk – the investors loved it, the athletes started wearing it, and influencers came on board fast,” says Keeling. “Even high-end partners reached out after seeing the site and the product. That kind of reaction doesn’t happen without a brand that is doing its job.”

The HYDA wordmark, seen alongside the mark for Coanda, the latest helmet line
The trident motif, as seen on the helmets
HYDA’s product line, seen on the website
The “shelter-shaped ‘A’” appears through the brand’s typography

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“Designers must speak up to change unfair IP laws”

Some laud the UK government’s consultation on changes to the UK designs framework as a “new dawn for UK design law.”

But what’s the real story? How will it affect UK designers? Will future intellectual property (IP) policy and or legislation improve the current David & Goliath copycat culture?

Will the long-awaited review ensure relevance and reform for all – including the UK’s 1.97million grassroots designers – to simplify protection and strengthen enforcement, when designs are stolen?

The jury is out.

While mainly technical and procedural in its approach, the consultation is also a one-off opportunity for designers to tell their story.

Real stories resonate. And it’s important the government understands the real cost of copying, where design infringement is happening, why it’s happening and the cost of copying on businesses, individuals and the future of UK design, both financial and emotional.

Unregistered rights need more force

ACID has fought, cajoled and campaigned for many years for a fresh review of what is an incredibly complex, often impenetrable legal system.

A system where the cost, time and stress of taking legal action to address the existential copycat culture is more than challenging; it can be decimating.

The majority of UK designers rely on copyright, and two different kinds of unregistered design rights. There is a significant overlap – thankfully addressed in the consultation – but the anomaly in protection is striking.

Copyright lasts for a creator’s life plus another 70 years, while the two unregistered design rights max out at 15 years. Intentionally infringing copyright can mean up to 10 years in prison, yet intentionally copying an unregistered design carries no criminal penalty at all.

We hold the view there should be parity across both IP rights.

For example, the photographer who captures a new 3D product in an image will hold stronger rights than the designer who invested years and resources bringing that product to market, a clear inequity.

Is it fair to structure copyright law around expression and culture and design law around industrial production and competition? Can one weigh up the talent and creativity of, say, a song writer against an iconic furniture designer, both attracting different IP rights?

Our view therefore is that an “effective deterrent system with robust capability” must include criminalising the intentional infringement of an unregistered design, in line with the criminal penalties facing those who infringe registered designs. We are also seeking more robust IP protection generally.

Any prosecution needs to pass the two-limb test in the Attorney General’s guidelines – that a prosecution must be in the public interest, and that there is a greater than 50% likelihood of a conviction.

An “overstated” case against

Opposition to creating criminal liability for deliberately infringing an unregistered design has come from some global businesses – and their stooges.

Their flimsy argument, without evidence, claims that criminalising the theft of designer’s creations would be “chilling for innovation” and “disincentivise designers.”

Even the government, after the last consultation, said this had been “overstated.”

UK design law policy is currently determined by the IPO, which sits within the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). The main role of this body is to register patents and trade marks, and, to a lesser extent, designs.

But as the vast majority of designs are unregistered, policy in this area is being left to an organisation that is not close to the needs and interests of designers.

Perhaps design policy might be better situated within the Department of Culture, Media and Sport which has a better understanding of the creative sensibilities of designers?

The consultation proposes modernising design law, clarifying protection for generated interactive interfaces (GUIs), animations, and scope of coverage, while notably excluding AI-generated designs, with which we welcome and agree.

The aim – a future-proof system that strengthens UK creativity and innovation in the digital era.

Helping David take on Goliath

However, David, mainly relying on unregistered design rights, is forever battling Goliath in copycat wars whose insidious players – behemoth retailers, national and global manufacturers, competitors and online perpetrators – romp away unchallenged because the legal system is costly and therefore inaccessible to those who need it most.

One doesn’t have to go too far back to remember PMS International vs Trunki (aka Magmatic) case, and the calamitous consequences of a Supreme Court judgment which many designers, and lawyers, questioned at the time. It centred on a technicality, which failed the design creator to the tune of £1million.

Design is the golden thread that weaves through the UK’s creative industries and permeates every aspect of daily life, shaping the products we use, the spaces we inhabit, and the experiences we cherish.

Nevertheless, it’s an unsung hero. The design economy is a powerful engine of innovation and growth, underpinning all seven pillars of the Industrial Strategy and driving national competitiveness.

At its core lies IP, a reflection of the imagination, skill, and ingenuity of British designers, which must be recognised, celebrated, and robustly protected as a source of enduring economic value, cultural influence, and global leadership.

Designers can take part in the Government’s consultation here.

ACID has a dedicated page about the consultation here. It is also running a workshop on October 22 – you can register to take part here.

Dids Macdonald is chairman and co-founder of Anti Copying in Design.

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What we learned when Design Week met Warrington

Thanks to the support of GF Smith, we are heading out across the UK over the coming months to find out what designers really think – hopes, fears, challenges, and everything in between.

We kicked things off last week in Warrington, where we were thrilled to be joined by designers from different disciplines and at different stages of their careers.

Here are some of the things we heard, presented anonymously to make sure people could be as honest as they wanted to be!

Our Design Week Meets Warrington event

Brand is back baby

According to the brand designers that came along, this is a good time to be working in that space. “Brand is firmly back on the table after a period of obsession around performance marketing,” one designer said.

That said, the pressure is on to make sure this longer-term brand thinking is presented and developed in the right way.

“The value of brand is rooted in the why and the how,” one designer said. “Designers have to get better at building a story.”

AI, obviously

While AI is obviously going to crop up in any discussion about the current state of design, we were struck by the overall optimism around it. There are clearly nerves, but on the whole, the designers we met didn’t seem existentially concerned that it signals the end of their profession as we know it.

“Most of us are already using AI, and we are quietly confident it won’t replace our jobs just yet,” one person told us. “If anything, it still has a way to go!”

Our Design Week Meets Warrington event

Another said there is a general acknowledgement that it’s not going away.

“And so perhaps the right attitude is to view it as a tool that can assist with boring repetitive tasks, freeing up more time for creative thinking and design, especially in small teams and businesses.”

Know your worth

But, perhaps linked to the AI issue, there was a feeling that designers need to get better at protecting and communicating what they bring to the table.

“How do we show businesses the amount of time it takes to do something?” one person said. “How do we communicate that value?”

There was a sense that, compared to other creatives, designers are perhaps less precious, too open to critique and, in some cases, too quick to be reduced to service-providers. “We don’t value our skills enough,” one designer said.

Our Design Week Meets Warrington event

For one attendee, part of the solution to this problem is reasonably straightforward. “Design needs professional standards, like plumbers,” they said. “And people should only be able to get work if they can show they meet those criteria.”

The squeeze on junior roles

There was a sense that entry-level and more junior design jobs are under pressure. There a few things feeding in here – from remote and hybrid set-ups which make it harder to train and mentor younger staff, to a focus on short-term outputs giving early-career designers less room to learn.

One thing that cropped up in several guises was the changing nature of job descriptions for junior roles. It was pointed out that many of these now require a level of experience that makes them anything but entry-level.

And not only that, these jobs sometimes require a range of skillsets that go way beyond design, and expect applicants to be strategists, content creators and copywriters as well as designers.

One attendee wondered whether career paths are set to change forever, whether “people will ‘pass through’ design in the future, rather than spending 20 years+ there.”

Our Design Week Meets Warrington event

Take a beat

“Design seems to be in a rush to get where it’s going, even if we don’t really know where that is.”

This line summed up a sense that the industry can feel pretty panicky right now. There was definitely an appetite for more intentional, constructive discussion, as opposed to attention-grabbing, black-and-white pronouncements (“Agencies are dead!”) that don’t seem to help anyone.

And maybe listening is as important as talking.

“I have been quite contemplative today about how polarised my thinking has become,” one attendee said. “It’s great to talk to others, who have such different experiences, so that you can challenge your own thinking.”

More dogs at design events

No further details needed.

Our Design Week Meets Warrington event

Thanks again to GF Smith for supporting this series. We’re heading to Hull and Middlesborough for our next events – keep an eye on the site and our socials for details.

Our Design Week Meets Warrington event
Our Design Week Meets Warrington event
Our Design Week Meets Warrington event

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“Designers need to think more like artists”

Many people think the sole purpose of graphic design is to solve problems and that art is all about self-expression. But I’ve never subscribed to the idea that design and art are intrinsically different.

The lines between great design and art have always been blurred. The Bauhaus unified artistic vision, mass production and function to shape the modern discipline of design. And there’s unforgettable artistry in the work of design pioneers like Otl Aicher, Gerd Arntz, Saul Bass, Alan Fletcher, Milton Glaser and Paul Rand.

Art is fundamentally about reflecting human experience and society. Great design resonates with people because it is culturally and emotionally meaningful.

Design is one of the most influential art forms

We tend to think of art as something far removed from the ‘real world’ but in his book, A Designer’s Art, Paul Rand said, “Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics.”

Graphic design is one of the most influential art forms. It’s part and parcel of nearly every aspect of people’s lives. It informs and inspires us.

John Spencer’s Blurred Lines book

And design is a vital ingredient in all effective marketing but over-reliance on market research, focus groups, performance metrics and the need for quantifiable, measurable results encourages safe, formulaic design.

As advertising legend Bill Bernbach said, “Rules are what the artist breaks; the memorable never emerged from a formula.”

The increasing dominance of short-term marketing-focused goals and fear of a backlash against bold ideas stifles originality. We need to be more assertive and not allow what we do to be hindered by client expectations, groupthink and data-driven decisions.

The borderland where design meets art

We need to think more like artists, expand our experiences, challenge conventional thinking, and breathe emotional resonance into our work. Artistic thinking allows us to observe with a critical eye, bring fresh perspectives, and create work that’s grounded in meaning.

A spread in John Spencer’s Blurred Lines book

Designers who work in the borderland where design meets art are all about breaking free from established views, exploration and risk-taking. They’re loath to churn out stuff that’s hackneyed and forgettable.

When designers think like artists, they’re thinking about how their work touches people, not just about how it functions.

Fight against the ugliness

Massimo Vignelli believed, “The life of a designer is a life of fight: fight against the ugliness.” He went on to define ugliness not just as a visual quality but as products that fail to be both aesthetically pleasing and functionally solve a problem.

He was on a mission to bring order, beauty, and functionality to the world, using it to combat mediocrity, blandness and poor design. Saul Bass said, “I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares, as opposed to ugly things. That’s my intent.”

A shift in perspective, embracing artistic thinking, can lead to transformative results, not only making design more useful and impactful, but a thing of beauty too. For me, beautiful design isn’t a luxury – it’s a strategic necessity. It isn’t about prettiness, it’s about clarity, harmony and resonance.

Transform the functional into the memorable

The most influential graphic design comes from embracing the subjective, emotional and boundary-pushing aspects of the way artists think. It has the capacity to translate values and ambitions into visual experiences that linger long after the first encounter, and to achieve what Milton Glaser called the “wow response.”

It transforms the functional into the memorable.

A spread in John Spencer’s Blurred Lines book

As Stefan Sagmeister said, “You can have an art experience in front of a Rembrandt… or in front of a piece of graphic design.” Design not only needs to do its job, but it ought to resonate emotionally and intellectually too.

Design and art are two voices in an ongoing conversation – one that adapts to context, purpose and audience.

When they come together the result is work that not only communicates but provokes, inviting people to question the conventions that have traditionally separated design from art.

The most memorable design often arises from these liminal spaces where certainty gives way to experimentation and constraint becomes a springboard for invention.

Celebrate the interconnectedness

Without human oversight generative AI will hasten the drift towards predictable, algorithm-friendly, boring design. The upshot of its reliance on existing data is a “feedback loop” of increasingly standardised work that prioritises aesthetics over authentic meaning.

Our willingness to celebrate the interconnectedness of design and art and embrace the blurred lines that exist between those worlds is now more important than ever, because it’ll give our work human insight, context and emotional depth.

John Spencer is a graphic designer and the founder of design agency Offthetopofmyhead. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the International Society of Typographic Designers. His new book, Blurred Lines, is available here.

A spread in John Spencer’s Blurred Lines book
A spread in John Spencer’s Blurred Lines book

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“The age of imperfection – why brands are embracing flaws as features”

In Italy, we argue endlessly about pasta shapes – whether rigatoni holds more sauce than penne, or if spaghetti should ever meet ragù.

But my grandmother once revealed to me a secret that cut through all that noise – minuzzaglia.

A humble mix of broken pasta pieces, once considered poor people’s food in old Neapolitan homes. No elegance, no uniformity, just scraps gathered together.

And yet, when she served it, it was a feast of surprises.

Every spoonful was different – ridges, curves, twists, smooth bites, a feast of textures and tastes. What looked imperfect was, in truth, a hidden luxury – one dish, infinite variations.

That day, I learned that imperfection is not the opposite of beauty. Sometimes, imperfection is alive, playful, and generous.

“Imperfection isn’t a lack – it’s a point of view.”

In that bowl of broken pasta, I first tasted a truth that later followed me into design – perfection is overrated.

I’ve spent most of my life working in design, and if there’s one thing I’ve grown suspicious of its perfection. Perfectly polished visuals. Perfectly balanced campaigns. Nice, yes. Safe, sure.

But just like a dish of pasta where every piece looks the same, safe never made anyone fall in love.

That’s why I hold onto a different idea: take the word imperfect. Now shift one small mark and create a space, and it becomes “I’m perfect.” Nothing added, nothing removed.

That apostrophe? That’s you! The perspective, the human touch, the spark that changes everything. That’s design in a nutshell – the power to reframe imperfection as meaning.

That tiny apostrophe opens a bigger conversation – how brands today are using imperfection not as a compromise, but as a strategy.

Imperfection as a way of thinking

Fashion designer Martin Margiela taught me that imperfection can be a philosophy. He flipped fashion inside out, showing seams, raw hems, and labels exposed.

His work was never about polish but about honesty, chaos, and wit. Margiela revealed what brands often hide: process, fragility, the unfinished. He showed that imperfection isn’t a lack. It’s a point of view.

Imperfection as sustainability

Patagonia expresses imperfection differently. For them, it’s about durability. Their jackets tell stories through patches, repairs, scars. They run ads that literally say “Don’t Buy This Jacket.” They remind us that imperfection is proof of life lived, of respect for resources, of responsibility.

I see Patagonia’s approach as radical honesty. They don’t pretend their products last forever or stay pristine. Instead, they embrace wear-and-tear as value.

A stain isn’t a flaw; it’s a memory. A patch isn’t a fix; it’s pride. In a market obsessed with the new, Patagonia’s imperfections become their strongest badge of authenticity. And they help you to keep it that way.

Imperfection as generosity

Too Good To Go takes imperfection and turns it into care. Meals that supermarkets would discard, portions that vary, surprises in the bag. Nothing polished, everything human.

Here imperfection becomes generosity, the simple act of saving food instead of wasting it.

Every imperfect meal tells a story: someone noticed, someone cared, someone chose to act. That small gesture transforms imperfection into a moral choice, a kindness made visible.

Imperfection as lifestyle

Then there’s Vans. No skater wants clean, perfect sneakers.

Perfection, in their world, holds no meaning. Shoes need scribbles, tape, torn soles. Every scrape is a badge of honour. The more battered, the better.

Vans built an entire lifestyle brand on this truth. They don’t sell pristine sneakers; they sell rebellion, chaos, and energy in motion.

Imperfection here is not just tolerated, it’s the very identity of the culture. I love how raw that is. Vans says, “Go ahead, ruin me.” That’s how I become yours.

Imperfection as nature

Aesop’s imperfection is quiet, almost meditative. Step into one of their stores, and nothing is standardised.

Uneven walls, rough textures, natural irregularities. No two spaces are the same. In a world of glossy sameness, Aesop creates environments that feel alive, tactile, and rooted.

Their philosophy is steeped in wabi-sabi – the beauty of the incomplete, the transient, the raw.

Walking into Aesop doesn’t feel like entering a branded machine; it feels like entering a space shaped by nature and humans alike, with respect for place, time, and imperfection.

Imperfection in process

My most personal encounter with imperfection came while filming a campaign for Baxter inside the Gipsoteca Antonio Canova.

The museum is filled with plaster prototypes of Canova’s sculptures, not flawless marbles, but works in progress, alive with motion and human touch. Standing among them, I felt electricity.

The prototypes carried more life than perfection ever could. Baxter understood this: the unfinished is not a flaw, it is a process. Imperfection carries honesty, momentum, and genius in motion.

Imperfection in living

A furniture catalogue is not a showroom. It’s a portrait. Most interior design brochures show flawless, staged homes, polished but lifeless.

For Zanotta, a different path was chosen – 12 real homes, belonging to architects, DJs, artists, lawyers. Full of objects, rituals, clutter, laughter, and love.

The only rule: move just one or two pieces to introduce a Zanotta object. That small act sparked a dialogue between design and life, elegance and reality. Even the shoot broke convention; flash captured immediacy, spontaneity, and the luxurious vitality of living.

Beauty is not in flawless display, but in conversation with life itself.

Imperfection in design

Even the most iconic brands carry imperfection in their very symbols. Take Apple – the logo is not a perfect apple; it has a bite taken out.

That bite is everything. It breaks symmetry, gives the mark a narrative, and makes it unforgettable. A flawless apple? Just an apple. The missing piece is what made it legendary.

When the myth of perfection fades, what remains are these imperfect gestures I choose to live by:

People over polish. The best logos feel like friends – familiar enough to trust, surprising enough to love.

Art, not just design. Design solves problems and art stirs the soul. Let feeling and poetry break the grid wide open.

Make a symbol. Not just a logo, but a living mark – a heartbeat, a song, a sketch. Strong enough to be remembered, gentle enough to smile back.

Designed to be redesigned. Nothing is sacred or fixed. Bend it, break it and let others redraw it. A system is alive only if it mutates

The smile factor. Because nothing disarms like joy. Design is braver when it smiles at you first.

When I see the word imperfect, I don’t see failure anymore.

I see Patagonia jackets with patched elbows. Vans shoes – torn and taped. Too Good To Go’s meals saved.

The apostrophe in “I’m perfect” is more than punctuation; it’s the reminder that what makes us human is what makes us matter. Here’s the truth I’ve come to believe – perfection is admired, but imperfection is loved.

Angelo Ferrara is creative director and partner at global brand design agency Robilant.

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How is Studio Dumbar using AI?

Studio Dumbar is a Dutch agency that works on strategy, branding, design and motion for clients like OpenAI, Instagram and the Utah Jazz. Here the studio, as a collective, tells us how they use AI, and how they feel about it.

You can see all the articles in this series here.

Broadly speaking, are you excited for how AI will change the design industry, or nervous?

Definitely excited. We’ve always looked for ways to create outside our mainstream design software.

We have embraced motion and 3D early on, and we love finding interesting concepts using tools that are not specifically made for design. That is also the reason why we started using creative coding in our design process – so we could make our own tools, but also come to and embrace unexpected results.

Of course, there are things about AI that we need to solve before we fully welcome it, like ownership and claiming your own creative input while using i., But it opens so many more doors than it closes.

Do you have an agreed policy around AI as a business?

We are a part of DEPT®, and as such, we have a Digital Ethics Advisory Board to analyse the societal impact of our craft, to develop our perspective, to align results with our values and goals, and to collaborate with our clients in all matters related to AI.

Next to this we have global AI guardrails, which we check every time we want to use a new tool to make sure it’s safe. Lastly, we always ask our clients for their AI policies, to make sure we are sticking to those as well.

When did you realise AI was going to have an impact on design?

Our first real introduction to AI was around 2018 when image-generation GANs came on the scene. It was before the current AI boom, and the quality and usability was nothing compared to what we are used to now.

Still, there was something magical about watching images appear that were drawn by a non-human. They carried a distinct aesthetic where one image would dissolve into another, which we wanted to replicate for a project we worked on at that time.

We never got it to work because the outcome was unpredictable and impossible to control. It needed immense training time – that we didn’t have.

The struggle with control is still there, but transformers have changed the scale and quality of what AI can do. The question is no longer about generation itself, but about how much ownership we hold over the results.

Have you undergone any AI training, either as a studio or individuals?

As a studio, we did not do any official AI training, but we definitely had work sessions where we all experimented with AI in image, video and sound generation, as well as vibe coding explorations.

Some people in the studio have a natural interest in AI and delve way deeper into how it works, and how we can apply it in our design process.

How do you use AI in the studio’s creative process?

The obvious uses are there – brainstorming, generating images or video for early inspiration, or coding experiments that help us explore ideas quickly. We also use upscaling and editing tools to move faster and often to get better results than we could otherwise.

For all technologies we use in the studio, we believe the more you understand how it works, the better you can work with it.

So, using AI to speed things up is all fine. But to make actual strong work using AI, we either want enough control to shape the details exactly as we want, or treat the AI as a partner in the process.

This goes beyond typing a clever prompt and waiting for results. It’s about knowing how to push, guide, and play with the system until the work feels truly ours.

Do you think clients care if/how you use AI in your work?

Yes, most of our clients – around 80% – strictly forbid us to use AI in the end product, due to potential legal issues.

Even clients that are in AI themselves, as a business, often still want bespoke manual work that fits their question better. However, we also see more and more specific demand for AI-generated work, where the generation of images and video is part of the assignment.

What matters most to us is the final result. We don’t limit ourselves to one process, so if AI gives us something unique or impossible otherwise, we’ll embrace it when we have the chance.

Do you use AI for any non-creative aspects of running your business?

Yes, we use it to review quotes, check mails, analyse research and for investigative strategy work for new clients

Beyond the best known tools, what is one AI tool that you would recommend to other design studios?

We like tools where it still feels like we’re the ones steering, not just AI doing its thing.

For example Flora, where you can chain genAI models together and build images or videos in steps, feels closer to design work than just prompting 20 random variants and picking one.

Lately we’ve also been trying out training our own models and messing around with set-ups in Automatic1111 or ComfyUI. It’s about putting AI into our workflow, not turning the workflow over to AI.

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