Studio Blackburn’s new identity for Nopinz cycling puts performance first

Nopinz, a British cycling brand built for competitive athletes, has come to be known for its obsession with speed and performance. It specialises in aerodynamic racewear and patented innovations that eliminate drag to give riders a crucial advantage.

After almost a decade in the industry, Nopinz felt a rebrand was in order to better reflect where the company finds itself today. They turned to the London-based brand, design, and strategy agency Studio Blackburn, who delivered a comprehensive facelift.

There were a few things the rebrand had to do. It needed to speak to Nopinz’s technical edge, reimagine its tone of voice, and create an identity that could keep pace with the brand’s growing success.

“Our fundamental DNA is that our kit can make you go faster,” says Colin Hatfield, director at Nopinz. “We wanted to celebrate that, and that’s what really drove the brief.”

Studio Blackburn’s rebrand for Nopinz

Hatfield explains how every detail is designed to make riders aerodynamic, especially in time trials, where “it’s just you against the clock, and you’ve got no protection from the wind.”

This obsession – to make riders faster – sits at the heart of Nopinz’s design philosophy.

As Hatfield says, Nopinz’s products are built to slice through the air. This commitment to the performance-driven, technical nature of Nopinz informed Studio Blackburn’s creative decisions, as did the name of the brand itself.

Nopinz is a nod to the brand’s breakthrough innovation – a patented pocket that holds race numbers in place without the need for safety pins.

“Having a negative in the brand name is a bit odd,” says Hatfield. He adds that the team was unsure about the name for a while, until Studio Blackburn flipped the script, turning the negative into a positive, powerful statement.

In the resulting brand language, the studio chose to strike out certain words in the messaging (For example, For Weekend Warriors), setting the tone for Nopinz’s voice.

“That line through the word gives us the ability to communicate a message and cross out the words within it that aren’t relevant to the brand,” says Studio Blackburn’s CEO and founder, Paul Blackburn.

“It’s branding in its primal form, in a way. It feels very specific and intentional. By clearly defining what Nopinz is not, the brand effectively establishes what it stands for, setting it apart from other cycling brands.”

The idea instantly hit home with the Nopinz team. “As soon as we saw it, we knew that that was the way forward for us. It was a real eureka moment,” says Hatfield.

The brand language allows Nopinz to say things as they are, giving it a sense of confidence, which is also echoed in the minimalistic slant of the visual system. In their symbolic intent to “eliminate drag,” the team leaned on precise, strong typography, using a custom cut of Greed by Displaay Type Foundry for the wordmark, with the slashed zero (Ø) logo mark built into the typeface.

Studio Blackburn’s rebrand for Nopinz

For the body copy, Studio Blackburn handpicked a single weight of Basel Grotesk by Optimo Type Foundry.

“We chose to work with only one weight because we were confident we could push it and get variation through different type sizing, instead of using lots of different typefaces,” says senior designer Will Cooper.

“Again, that comes from the intention of stripping it back as much as possible, to keep things very concise.” The minimalistic visual voice allows the brand “to speak with confidence,” he says.

“We don’t do minimalism for minimalism’s sake. We tend to pare things back to their simplest and most vital, and then we amplify,” says Blackburn.

“That’s what we’ve tried to do here; we’ve given it a behavioral quality as well, which also represents that ‘lack of drag.’ There’s something very simple and elegant about the way that the brand moves. It’s quick and urgent, but never over-the-top.”

Another defining feature of the rebrand is the introduction of a singular, signature brand hue, the Nopinz Zone 5 colour, that punctuates the identity.

Hovering between that line between red and orange, the rich colour injects new energy into the brand.

“In endurance training, athletes work in different zones of effort. Lots of different training applications use colour to track what zone you’d be in,” says Cooper.

“Zone 5, which is sort of that highest anaerobic area of performance, is usually marked by this color that’s not red, nor orange,” making it not just the perfect hue, but also a recognisable one for the competitive cycling community.

“We’ve had some feedback, and people seem to just get it,” says Hatfield. “When you’re in a time trial, Zone 5 is what you’re aiming for, so it just clicks.”

The larger rebrand has already struck a chord with the community.

Bigger rollouts are on the horizon, but the initial reception has been “very positive,” says Hatfield, adding that “people really have an affection for the brand.”

Perhaps the reason the refreshed identity resonates so deeply is that it speaks to Nopinz’s audience in their own language, while priming the brand for its next chapter.

Studio Blackburn’s rebrand for Nopinz
Studio Blackburn’s rebrand for Nopinz
Studio Blackburn’s rebrand for Nopinz
Studio Blackburn’s rebrand for Nopinz

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AI branding is growing up – with expressive brand worlds taking the wheel

It’s bizarre now to think back on how quickly AI slipped into our daily lives, shaping the way we work and live. The global AI market is now valued at nearly $391billion, with forecasts suggesting it could grow almost five-fold by the end of the decade.

But as the sector grows, so too does the need to stand out. A fresh crop of AI brands is entering an increasingly crowded market, yet the products themselves often chart entirely new territory, with tools and services with no clear precedent.

That gives branding a crucial role – not only in setting the stage for these products and articulating what they offer, but also in ensuring they stand apart in a teeming landscape.

What’s striking across this new wave of launches – as well as established AI platforms undergoing a refresh – is a deliberate decision to move away from the default visual tropes of tech.

Gone are the gradients, sparkles, and stripped-back minimalism – in their place, studios are building identities with more texture, personality, and nuance, presenting AI less as a faceless system and more as a relatable partner.

How&How’s new brand for Jupi

When How&How began working on the identity for Jupi, an AI-powered decision-making operating system, they set out to create a brand that looked and felt unlike anything that had come before.

“What we wanted with Jupi was something really out of the category. We wanted it to challenge the conventional, almost chillingly robotic, minimalist, OpenAI-ish aesthetic, and feel more authentic and human,” says Cat How, CEO and executive creative director of How&How.

That ambition was sharpened through strategy led by narrative consultancy FNDR, whose insights underscored Jupi’s dynamic decision-making ability.

The studio decided to focus on this idea of dynamism and translated it visually into a number of elements, from motion that melts like Dali’s clocks to a mascot, inspired by Rodin’s The Thinker, that walks and moves.

The Thinker offered a powerful metaphor for a decision-making operating system. To convey Jupi’s agility and its ability to think on its feet, the mascot was given a pair of legs, allowing it to stride across screens. Its treatment carries meaning too.

The rough, almost-chiselled finish of both the mascot and the wordmark suggests that decision-making is always a work in progress – imperfect, evolving, and in constant flux. Its hand-hewn texture also injects a sense of humanity, a conscious break from the slick, polished perfection long associated with the tech industry.

Elsewhere, the Magritte-esque illustrations, drenched in metaphors and an air of surrealism, add personality to the brand, while giving it a vivid visual voice that’s unafraid to stick out in the crowd.

“It’s just really sad, how, when branding for tech, we’re all forced to fall into the familiar tropes of everything having to look blue and trustworthy,” How says. “It was important for us that Jupi look nothing like what we usually see in tech, because it shows that they’re confident about being different.

“There’s a big appetite for things that are different because people see so much of the same stuff nowadays. So the idea is that you either go big or go home.”

As How points out, tech brands face a unique challenge. They’re often selling something intangible, without the immediate sensory cues of a physical product.

That’s why emotion and storytelling become so important – they bring life and clarity to something that mostly exists as code and concept. “It’s certainly easier to sell beer than it is to sell an AI decision-making tool,” How adds.

How&How’s new brand for Jupi

That exercise of taking something intangible and giving it a brand world, that feels immediately human and palpable, was a challenge Parker took on when branding Picco. The AI-powered platform is designed to automate and streamline repetitive tasks for sales teams, enhancing productivity and efficiency.

Rather than presenting Picco as a magical fix-all, Parker framed the brand as a true companion to day-to-day work.

“Particularly in the sales space, where demands are fast-moving and often unpredictable, the identity needed to signal a tool that is light, nimble, and reactive. The narrative wasn’t about replacing people, but about supporting them – removing friction, keeping pace, and helping teams focus their energy where it has the most impact,” says Tyler Eide, creative director and founder of Parker.

Parker’s brand world for Picco

In order to give the intangible product a relatable visual world, Parker rooted the identity in textured illustrations of outdated office tools – fax machines, typewriters, staplers – teasing the brand idea of “out with the old, in with the new.”

By elevating these tools – that literally levitate and leave the screen – the team nods to the past, while signaling progress.

“The whimsical treatment turns what once felt clunky into something light and contemporary, a perfect counterpart to Picco’s bird symbol,” Eide says. “It’s a way of saying: the old technology has had its day, and now Picco is here to take its place.” Meanwhile, the brand’s innate sense of agility is captured in the hummingbird icon and the wordmark that takes cues from performance brands, evoking speed and efficiency.

Parker’s identity for Picco

Together, these playful, narrative-driven elements not only differentiate Picco’s offering, but also give the brand a visual identity that sidesteps conventional norms in tech branding.

“We weren’t interested in making this feel like another piece of ‘tech.’ Instead, the identity is built around a promise: a lighter, more nimble way of working,” says Eide.

Picco’s approach exemplifies a broader challenge in AI branding – creating identities that feel human and relatable while reflecting the sophistication and capabilities of emerging tech.

A key part of this lies in understanding, and responding to, our evolving relationship with digital tools. Leading brands in the space create a sense of optimism about what AI can unlock, while taking responsibility for how it is applied.

“Visually, that means brands are becoming more imaginative, rather than presenting themselves as cold, futuristic utilities,” says Ben Lewin, partner at Otherway.

Otherway’s identity for Robin

In their comprehensive rebrand for Robin, an AI-powered platform that re-imagines legal work, Otherway knew they had to imbue the identity with a sense of humanity, while also underpinning, “the cutting-edge innovation that has gone into making such a powerful platform,” says Jordan Mann, Otherway’s design director.

That considered balance reveals itself in several aspects of the identity. The updated Robin icon stands, “as a beacon of humanity and character, while the majority of AI brands are leaning into a more ‘process’ or ‘precision’ lead brand mark,” says Mann.

The redbreast brand colour is immediately recognisable amidst a sea of cold blues and purples in the industry, and brings the warmth the brand needs. Typography, UI, and the layout system complete the picture with a framework that is precise, authoritative, and robust, speaking to Robin’s technical foundations.

A significant part of the worldbuilding – and arguably its most distinctive feature – is the moving, illustrated landscapes users can actively journey through.

Otherway’s illustrated landscapes for Robin

“The strategic direction was ‘New Legal,’ a punchy provocation that reframes the possibilities of legal within the world of business, from roadblock to driver of growth,” says Mann.

“This drove every decision within the new brand system, but came to life most powerfully within our digital landscapes, framing ‘New Legal’ as a serene and abundant place you can go to, designed to feel like the antithesis of the stressful experience of old legal.”

And he adds, legal can be intimidating, abstract, and often invisible, which makes it hard to visualise in a way that resonates emotionally.

“Illustration gave us a way to turn those intangible ideas into something expansive and optimistic. Ariel Lee’s painterly style was the perfect way to create a world that felt warm and innately human,” says Mann.

“Through her landscapes, we could show transformation – forests opening up, paths emerging, ecosystems flourishing – and give Robin a world that feels inspiring, not transactional.”

Otherway’s illustrated landscapes for Robin

Perhaps the surge of more expressive branding for AI is a response to the evolving role these tools play in our lives. Increasingly, AI is no longer being cast as a flawless, all-knowing, slap-on solution to every problem, but as a partner that works alongside us.

This shift asks designers to imagine identities that feel less transactional and more relational – brands that reassure, inspire, and invite collaboration rather than dictate it.

By weaving together narrative, emotion, type, texture, and illustration, studios are giving form to this change, showing that the most compelling AI brands aren’t distant or mechanical, but instead feel present, human-aware, and supportive.

“Every wave of new tech arrives with a big bang, then slowly finds its place in the world. AI is at that stage now,” Lewin says.

“We’re starting to see AI brands moving away from being seen as ‘machines’ to being understood as ‘collaborators.’

“That doesn’t mean over-humanising or appearing fake. It means designing with empathy and imagination, so people see AI as a tool that works with them, not against them.”

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“Move over authenticity – this is the era of authentication”

Lately, I’ve found myself more interested in hats. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it’s anticipation of a bald-headed future, or just a fascination with an accessory as old as the loincloth, carrying a history just as rich in design.

As a result of this mild obsession, I recently noticed a resurgence of the iconic New Era baseball cap. Specifically, wearers proudly sporting the original “sticker of authenticity.”

Even glimpsed from the corner of my eye, it jars. The shiny sticker disrupts visual harmony and irks me. But the sticker was never meant to create aesthetic harmony – it was always intended as proof.

This trend, beginning in the 1990s, signifies the cap as brand new, or “fresh.” In a culture that places a high value on pristine and authentic apparel, the sticker became a visual testament to the hat’s unworn condition.

It also served as a clear indicator that the cap was not a counterfeit, with the shiny, often holographic, sticker being a difficult feature to replicate.

Over time, the reasons for leaving the sticker on have shifted. And now, as we reach the zenith of the slop epoch, any marker of originality gains currency.

The Getty watermark flex

A few months ago, I read a post about Getty’s watermark becoming a coveted cultural artefact, an intriguing digital parallel to the New Era sticker. Again, a conscious blemish embraced for its symbolic value.

“Is the Getty Images watermark about to become the new flex?” Nick Tran asked on LinkedIn. “It taps into a very real shift in how we treat images. As proof, not just visuals.

“The irony is we used to mock people for posting unlicensed watermarked images. But soon, we might see brands intentionally keeping it in for that little boost of this is real, we didn’t fake this.”

“Labelling is here to stay, because reality itself now demands a premium.”

The drivers of this shift feel obvious.

All corners of reality have grown plastic, unreliable, mushy. We can no longer easily separate dreams from nightmares, reality from fabrication. In imagery, in discourse, in economics, and of course, in politics, certainty is slipping away.

Against this backdrop, provenance grows more valuable. It provides not just proof, but grounding. Something to cling to. This is real. I can touch it. I can prove it.

My daughter, like most 12-year-olds, went through a phase watching Is It Cake?, the hit TV show where players (and viewers) must guess whether objects are what they appear to be, or are, in fact, cakes in disguise.

After only a few minutes I saw the allegory. This show is our reality. Watching another catastrophe in the news – is it cake? Scrolling through people and things in my feed – is it cake?

The changing role of lamp posts

Of course, this is maddening. The growing mental health crisis suggests industrial-scale gaslighting is taking a heavy toll.

We’ve lived with a sense of reliable reality for a long time – that things would be where we left them, that gravity would do its thing, that objects would conform to expectation, unless disrupted by earthquake, fire, or flood.

Under those conditions, lamp posts and paving slabs don’t seem valuable. But when the world tilts unexpectedly, and you’re sliding down its surface in your jeans, suddenly those lamp posts become lifelines. Solid. Real. Anchors of truth.

Labelling, then, is here to stay, because reality itself now demands a premium.

Those who can afford proof will pay for it, and those committed to seeking truth will signal it, clustering together in the process.

As I wrote in a previous column, the DPP legislation introduces mechanisms for authentication that could accelerate this shift: a quantifiable, reliable stamp of originality.

But beyond the mechanics, the cultural signal is clear. In an age of ambiguity, the value of “real” is rising.

For designers, this presents a challenge. Looking polished, according to design conventions, is no longer enough.

We need to revisit semiotics, Freud, and the symbolic modes people use to navigate their emotional realities. If AI’s cauldron keeps stirring aesthetics into flawless but homogenised broth, stripping them of symbolic charge, then new markers will need to emerge.

The sticker on the New Era cap. The Getty watermark. The DPP code. The question for brands is no longer how do we perform authenticity, but how do we authenticate?

Tension = possibility

I’ve been enjoying Jasmine Bina’s perspective on brand tension. She argues that great brands hold a tension at their core, and it’s this that gives them allure and cultural gravity.

Right now, that tension feels ripe with possibility.

We have a chance to break free from tired design tropes and the flattening effect of algorithmic averaging. To fuse raw, irrefutable markers of origin with a new symbolic language, one that doesn’t lean on nostalgia, but creates fresh templates for the present.

A language that deliberately carves a firebreak between the present and the last few decades of training data.

The real opportunity lies in embracing tension itself – the pull between aesthetic harmony and the need to signal honesty by breaking with it.

Is that anti-design? Maybe it’s just a necessary prevailing aesthetic to ground things again. Beauty and anti-aesthetic sparring for attention, and, in the process, signalling that brands, like us, are grappling with orientation.

Nicolas Roope is a designer, creative technologist and entrepreneur who previously co-founded Poke, Plumen and The Lovie Awards.

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Six projects, six decades – 60 years of Wolff Olins’ creative excellence

It’s 60 years since ad-man Wally Olins and designer Michael Wolff opened the doors of a new branding company in Camden Town, London. Over the past six decades, Wolff Olins has been one of the design world’s most consistently creative studios.

Global ECD Emma Barratt reflects on that legacy, and picks six projects that encapsulate the agency’s innovative spirit…

In today’s world, design moves fast. But in the rush towards whatever’s next, we are in danger of forgetting what it takes to shape genuine progress.

For 60 years, Wolff Olins has pushed the boundaries of what branding can be. Not by being popular. Not by following trends. Definitely not by playing it safe.

We’ve often made things weird, maybe even a little wild. At our best, we make brands which are undeniably wonderful. Built on the kind of creative bravery that makes people, and the press, a little uncomfortable.

Each of these brands is a statement.

A radical exploration of what a brand can become. Even when it was unpopular, Wolff Olins never stopped challenging. Even when times are tough, our inventive spirit remains.

1968: The Beatles’ Apple Records

Briefs don’t come better than this. We created the identity for The Beatles’ new record label, including the now-iconic apple logo still associated with the band today.

The result was a brand that sat somewhere between music, art and cultural moments. Weirder, riskier, and all the better for it.

1971: Bovis

A turning point – one of the first times a corporate identity was treated as more than a visual wrapper. We gave Bovis not just a logo, but a point of view.

This was branding as strategy, a radical shift in what design could do for business. It gave brands meaning far beyond the corporate logo, and redefined how companies show up in the world.

FPB0020O_07.tif

1989: First Direct

Banking, done bold. At a time when the sector was greyscale and faceless, we helped launch a phone-based bank with clarity, personality and bite. It didn’t feel like a bank. And that was the point.

It signalled the arrival of customer experience as brand, a radical idea at the time that reshaped the financial sector for good.

1994: Orange

Arguably one of the most radical consumer brands ever created. We took a sector dominated by technology jargon and gave it optimism, simplicity and humanity.

The identity was minimal to the extreme, an orange square. But the impact was immediate. Orange changed the branding landscape, and what customers expected from it.

2007: London 2012

People hated it. Then they loved it. Designed to disrupt, the jagged, unapologetic identity for the Olympics turned branding into a national conversation.

It wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t passive. It was bold, spirited and totally unforgettable, just like the urban energy of the city. Which is what it needed to be to reflect an Olympics like never before.

2009: AOL

We gave AOL a brand that could never sit still. A dynamic system based on a shifting canvas, years before anyone was talking about “living brands” or AI-
generated logos. It wasn’t designed for consistency, it was designed for fluidity.

2024: Benefit

Fast-forward to now. For Benefit, we reimagined what beauty branding can look like today – less perfect, more playful. In a world where everything feels polished and overproduced, we leaned into humour, looseness, and joy. It doesn’t blend in, and doesn’t want to, just like Benefit’s customers.

In a cautious market clients play safe. Compressed timelines, lower appetite for risk. You can feel how that starts to chip away at boldness. At ambition.

But this is when you need vision the most.

To put emotion back at the heart of ideas, and craft back at the centre of execution. To move us beyond decks and into culture. To lean into AI and innovation, not as a gimmick, but as a way to move faster and freer. To bring clients with us, and build brands people embrace, not just recognise.

Wolff Olins didn’t build its reputation by fitting in. We built it by refusing to. That spirit, scrappy, inventive, relentless, is what got us here. And it’s what will take us forward.

Because the truth is, design doesn’t change anything unless it’s brave. And brave doesn’t happen by accident.

Emma Barratt is global executive creative director at Wolff Olins. 

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Does your design studio need (better) company values?

The phrase “company values” brings many creatives out in a cold sweat. It conjures up the most excruciating parts of corporate culture – a world of forced-fun team building exercises and training sessions like that one in The Office.

But studies show that companies who create meaningful values, and commit to bringing them to life in the day-to-day experience of their employees, do better. They’re more productive, more innovative and retain their staff.

I know this, because last year I co-authored a book about company values with Dave Greasley, the owner of Sheffield-based studio 3800.

Values, it’s clear, have real value. And yet, 50% of people who work in a company which has a set of values, can’t remember what they are.

Part of the problem, Greasley explains, is that, “Most companies set them and forget them.”

Many leaders create a list of words that are inoffensive, unarguable and vague. Words like integrity, excellence, collaboration and respect. They mean everything and nothing, and so have little bearing on people’s real experience in that business.

But to harness their true potential, leaders need to take values more seriously. “For them to stand a chance, we need to give values as much time and consideration as we would our new website, or our financial targets,” Greasley explains.

Creative vs corporate

There is an added complication in design businesses. For some people, values, or the way they have traditionally been presented, feels totally at odds with the spirit of creative work.

This creates an “added pressure” on design businesses looking to create meaningful values, Interstate founder Jayne Connell explains.

“The challenge is to choose principles that resonate with a creative mind while also shaping the more grown-up, structured side of business: appraisals, career pathways and operations,” she says.

But balancing these two sides of the business while creating a set of studio values is well worth the time. By setting expectations, values can explain and encourage the culture that design leaders want to build. They can speed up decision-making, by empowering all employees to make well-considered calls within the framework set out by those values.

And they are especially useful in times of transition – or in fact crisis – to re-affirm what the business stands for and how it operates.

When Spencer Ryan stepped up as the new CEO of Vault49 recently, she worked with founders Jonathan Kenyon and John Glasgow to re-focus the team on its values.

“At pivotal moments, values act like a compass,” Ryan says.

“When I became CEO, we built our values into a strategic foundation – that gave me a platform to lead from and gave the team clarity on where we’re going. They also became a clear decision filter for me on where to focus the studio’s energy.”

Discovering your values

Like many businesses, Vault49 created its values by going back to its origin story. As Kenyon points out, this is a familiar approach that design studios take with their clients, teasing out the DNA which can link past, present and future.

“Studios are brands like any other, and the strongest brands root their values in their origin story,” he explains. “Ours came from our street art origin, where hustle, play, and swagger weren’t abstract ideas – they were a daily reality. Without that link back to the beginning, values risk becoming borrowed language.”

That translates very directly into Vault49’s values, one of which reads: “Vault49 was born from street-level culture. From the start, we’ve been grounded in community, unafraid to take risks, and driven to celebrate the beauty we saw in the world. Today, that same street-level lens guides how we see, think, create, and hire.”

But before diving into what your values should be, leaders need to be clear on what they want them to achieve.

As Gareth Atkinson, head of brand and partnerships at Mr B & Friends explains, “Values can play one of two roles for brands, but they can’t play both.

“They can reinforce who you are and where you are – in this instance, their role is to anchor and articulate elements of the employee experience. Or, they can be used to push you forward to where you’re trying to go. In this instance, their role is to connect employee mindset, decision making and behaviour to the company strategy.”

In this way, values can be used to cement a studio culture that’s already working well, or they can be used aspirationally to make changes that the leaders want to push.

This is an important distinction which shapes not only the output, the final list of values, but also the process for creating them. For example, if a studio wants to use values to drive a new culture, they may use employee input more sparingly than a company that wants to capture and codify how things currently work.

Understanding who you are

Patrick Duffy, the former executive creative director at Dice, is in the midst of creating the values for his new studio, Tonight.

“For me, it’s about understanding yourself before you start to speak to the world,” he says. “So I began by writing a business plan – not the sexiest exercise, but hugely useful in helping me understand what Tonight’s point of difference is in this overcrowded creative world. This was essential to understand before we go to values.”

Most people think four or five values is the maximum. But Richard Taylor, co-founder and CEO of Brandon Consultants, thinks “people can’t recall more than three” and Duffy agrees – “Like musketeers, values tend to move in threes.”

One of Tonight’s values is “Stay True,” which Duffy thinks acts as a reminder to his team about why, in a crowded and competitive landscape, he wanted to start a new studio in the first place.

“The most important thing for me is that we remain true to our goal of providing work that truly stands out – that we are genuinely an alternative choice,” he says. “’Stay True’ should always remind us of that ambition. And it’s also a banging Ghostface Killah track.”

Getting creative with values

Once studios have honed in on the core ideas they want to enshrine in their values, that’s where the creativity should kick in.

No business should really be falling back on those meaningless one-word lists of values, but especially creative studios, who know more than anyone the power of cut-through messaging.

A lot of values will end up coalescing around similar themes, but the best leaders find interesting ways of communicating them.

So for New York-based Sister Mary studio, commitments to empathy and diversity become, “a sisterly soul” and “devoted to diversity of thought.”

Founder Leigh Chandler worked on them with strategist Emily Penny, and she loves the “playfully religious tone that Emily injected.”

One of How&How’s company values is “Total Team Spirit” which is loosely inspired by the 1970s Dutch philosophy of Total Football. In that context, players moved fluidly between positions on the pitch. And although co-founders Cat and Rog How aren’t big football fans, that concept felt relevant to the culture they want to build.

“We want everyone in the team to feel connected to and supported by everyone else, and also open-minded enough to take up any position they need to at a given time,” Cat How says. “This could be as simple as helping the studio manager unload the dishwasher or take the bins down, or jumping in to help a fellow designer on some animation work.

“No-one is too big or important to do the small things in the agency, and when everyone mucks in together, then that is when the magic happens,” she explains.

The key of course is to make the values as memorable as possible, because the more memorable they are, the more likely they will actually impact people’s day-to-day behaviour.

Memorability can also be built into the way values are presented to the team. The pointless PDF is the route to avoid here.

The Browser Company turned its values into a beautifully-written and evocative road-trip essay. Amy Bedford commissioned this great animation to communicate PALS’ studio values.

And in 3800’s Sheffield studio, there is a stone chair marked with personalised etchings from different team members. It represents one of 3800’s values – “Own your seat at the table.”

“In our case, our values became four little brands,” Greasley explains. “Each has their own personality and identity. Each needed a campaign to drive them home and each one needs ongoing comms to stay engaging.”

Actions speak louder than words

But however clever the language, or creative the delivery, success rests ultimately on how well, or not, they shape the culture.

“It’s actually not about the values,” Greasley admits. “It’s the behaviours and actions that sit beneath the values that really matter.

“If your people don’t have the capability, opportunity or motivation to enact these behaviours, it really doesn’t matter what fancy words you chose at the company off-site.”

Richard Taylor agrees. “Brand values are only worth their salt if they inform how you make decisions. Design agencies all too often create their own brand strategy, plaster the values on the wall, and then don’t live by them.

“You need to make your values part of the fabric of your business, part of its soul.”

Values need to show up very practically in the way a business runs. They should inform the hiring process, and form part of annual reviews, to directly shape how teams are built and developed. They can underpin mundane, but significant, policies around things like expenses and annual leave.

At Interstate, Jayne Connell breaks the studio values down into practical explainers for junior and senior employees.

So for “Being Intentional,” junior employees would be expected to demonstrate, “curiosity, asking thoughtful questions and showing focused learning,” while more senior team-members should, “model being intentional by guiding others with vision, empathy and accountability in the decision-making process.”

At Vault49, this commitment to making values practical means they largely avoid the v word altogether.

“We frame values as actions so they’re lived, not abstract,” Spender Ryan explains. “Otherwise, they risk becoming just words on a page.”

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How PALS’ Eurovision refresh points towards a different design studio model

The Eurovision Song Contest is the world’s biggest live entertainment event. More people watch the annual music competition than watch the Super Bowl, and in this year alone, the contest’s official channels have generated more than two billion impressions.

So when Eurovision decided to refresh its brand identity, ahead of its 70th anniversary in 2026, you might expect them to turn to one of the big design agencies.

Instead they commissioned PALS, a Sheffield-based agency run by Amy Bedford. PALS eschews the usual agency set-up in favour of the so-called “hub and spoke” model, where teams of freelancers are convened for specific projects, depending on its requirements.

Some believe this is the future of design agencies. In a widely-read op-ed last year, Emma Sexton argued the design industry was going through “a long overdue shake-up” and the freelance-based model, used by studios like PALS, would come to the fore.

Bedford came from a traditional agency background, working at studios like Peter & Paul, Jaywing and Fist of Fury. When she started PALS in 2019, she initially recreated the model with which she was familiar.

But she became convinced that there must be a different way to run projects, when, for example, the team worked on a drinks pitch and needed educating in the acronyms and other terminology that the client used. Wouldn’t it be better, she thought, to draft in people familiar with that world who could hit the ground running?

“The nature of each project is so different, so I wanted to build a different way to respond to briefs,” Bedford explains. “I didn’t want us to be the same five people, delivering the same five campaigns, even though it’s for five different clients.”

Instead Bedford built a global network of 150+ creatives around the world, from design directors and illustrators, to animators and copywriters. Most of those she works with have been freelancing for at least five years, which she believes is the sign of a talented creative.

“It’s the cream of the crop of freelancers, and when you put the right people together, you end up with a team that is totally different to the traditional agency model,” she explains. “In agencies, you often have one or two brilliant people, and then loads of people underneath who are not necessarily able to match that brilliance.”

PALS’ new identity for the Eurovision Song Contest

A key part of PALS’ approach is to bring together not just different skillsets, but also different perspectives, Bedford explains. So for a recent project for a client that monitors environmental data, the team included an artist, a comedian, and a water expert alongside more traditional creative roles.

“An agency is essentially a machine to solve communication problems,” she says. “So if you do it with the same team, who only ever solve problems in the same way, you’re only ever going to get the same work.

“I can put totally different brains on it, who are going to bring different perspectives, and challenge how we reach people.”

Bedford and PALS first worked with Eurovision in 2023. The studio created the brand strategy for the BBC’s show in Liverpool, after the UK stepped in as the 2022 runner-up to Ukraine, who couldn’t host due to the ongoing war with Russia.

PALS’ new identity for the Eurovision Song Contest

During that work, PALS created the “United by Music” brand idea, which was later adopted by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) who oversees the contest.

But most of the work done for each individual host country is jettisoned after each show. And so when Bedford pitched for doing the brand strategy for the 70th celebrations, she pointed out that Eurovision’s overarching brand was pretty nebulous.

“They obviously have a cultural behemoth of a brand that exists in people’s heads,” she says. “But if we were going to put it on paper, and say what the assets are associated with that, there was very little to communicate.”

The EBU wanted the new identity to work better on digital platforms – the previous one had stacked elements that could become cluttered when scaled down – and it needed to have stronger trademark protections. They also wanted PALS to incorporate the 70th celebrations into the new look.

The refresh took ten months, and Bedford worked with more than 20 freelance collaborators, from type designers and 3D artists, to specialists in youth culture and sports PR, who helped them think about reaching new audiences.

There is a new beating heart logo, which can respond and be adapted to different host nations, performers or campaign themes. For the upcoming anniversary, it has 70 layers, to represent each year of the contest’s history.

The core visual assets have been consolidated into a single hand-drawn marque, to create more consistency. And a new bespoke typeface, Singing Sans, replaces Gotham, to build in more personality and “create more ownership of the contest’s typographic voice.”

Martin Green, the director of the Eurovision Song Contest, welcomed the new look as being, “ bold, playful, and full of heart – just like the contest itself.”

But Bedford admits the process wasn’t always straightforward.

“It’s not been painless,” she says. “The design work chopped and changed until we found the sweet spot, and we went through so many different iterations to find something that reflects the heart of the contest.”

The PALS model, she points out, is perfectly set up to address these challenges in the creative process, as she is able to reset the team to address feedback and meet new requests. “It can be like Tetris,” Bedford explains.

Although fan reaction has been mixed – especially on Reddit –  Bedford is proud of what the team has created. “I knew it would get a reaction, but I wasn’t really prepared for the Reddit threads,” Bedford says.

“But the client is happy, and I think people get used to things like this. People absolutely fall in love with something they hated when they’ve seen it more than once, and in context.”

PALS’ new identity for the Eurovision Song Contest
PALS’ new identity for the Eurovision Song Contest
PALS’ new identity for the Eurovision Song Contest

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“A practical guide to harnessing AI for design work”

The creative industry stands at a crossroads. Generative AI has crashed onto the design desk with promises of instant solutions and creative acceleration, yet many brands risk mistaking that initial lift-off for a finished flight.

What really happens after the first prompt? The reality is relentless iteration, sharp art direction, and the disciplined craft that keeps brand stories authentic.

This isn’t another piece about AI replacing designers. It’s about what happens when the technology meets the messy, nuanced world of brand building.

How do we harness machine velocity without abandoning the soul of our work? How do we distinguish between AI as a creative multiplier versus a creative crutch?

The answer lies not in avoiding these tools, but in learning to wield them with the same intentionality we bring to every other aspect of our craft.

The reality check

Generative AI has landed like a jet-pack, launching us from blank canvas to visuals in seconds. But treating that first barrage of images as campaign-ready art trades hard-earned equity for a fleeting gimmick. Anyone who has driven Midjourney or Runway knows the dirty secret – good results are easy; the right results are hard.

The promise of instant output is seductive, especially under time and budget pressure. Yet prompt after prompt, you tweak perspective, palette, focal length, iterating with the same patience you once spent retouching and sketching storyboards.

Craft has merely moved upstream into language.

Think of these models as the fastest intern you’ve ever hired: brilliant at churning variations, clueless about nuance.

Your value lies in knowing when to brief, when to redirect, and when to say, “Thanks, I’ll take it from here.” The danger is treating AI imagery as a cheap replacement for discipline – polished at a glance, generic on inspection, eroding the authenticity that is modern branding’s currency.

Introducing the EDEN Loop

Explore: Wild ideation – hundreds of frames in minutes to map the creative landscape.
Diagnose: Force a critical eye. Do these images capture the brand’s emotional territory? Are they culturally sensitive?
Elevate: Bring human hands back to the controls, retouching anatomy, integrating brand elements, building in craft.
Nurture: Put work in front of real people, iterating until it triggers the intended feeling.

Knowing when not to use it

AI excels at texture, atmosphere, and rapid iteration. It struggles with precise storytelling beats – authenticity, empathy and subtle cultural references. If the narrative hinges on a single expression or mandated element, bespoke illustration or traditional photography may still be safer, and ultimately more authentic.

Part of professional judgment is scanning the brief, and deciding whether velocity will compromise veracity.

Safeguarding emerging talent

My biggest concern is the graduate who masters the prompt before design theory. We risk breeding a generation fluent in generating “cool” images, yet unaware of kerning, hierarchy, or brand narrative.

Design leaders must insist juniors sketch, ideate, and art-direct alongside experimenting with AI tools. Dual fluency is where the magic, and future employability, lies.

Essential guidelines

Write prompts like a director. Think lens, lighting, emotion, era, texture. The richer the brief, the fewer wasted iterations.
Layer your tools. Use AI to get partway there, then add finesse from Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects. Make it work across touchpoints.
Budget for craft. Allow for post-AI refinement – that’s where distinctiveness is forged.
Define an ethical ‘no-AI’ zone. Reserve sensitive roles – diverse human models, authentic voice talent, culturally rooted illustrators – for real people. Use AI to accelerate ideation, not erase lived experience.

The choice ahead

The generative revolution isn’t coming, it’s here. The question isn’t whether to engage with these tools, but how to engage thoughtfully. Agencies and marketers who embrace the EDEN loop, budget for craft, and resist the shortcut temptation will find significant competitive advantage.

As models evolve, the gap between raw AI output and finished craftsmanship will shrink, but not disappear.

Brand storytelling lives or dies on subtleties algorithms can’t yet intuit – context, irony, and cultural undercurrents. Designers who learn to wield AI as a multiplier of imagination, rather than substitute, will set the pace for the next creative decade.

The brands that thrive will use AI to amplify human creativity, not replace it. They’ll understand that while machines can generate infinite variations, only humans can choose the right one.

In an increasingly automated world, human judgment becomes not just valuable, it becomes irreplaceable.

The jet-pack is powerful, but the destination still requires a pilot. Make sure you’re the one holding the controls.

Matt Sanders is head of design at House 337.

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How is OHMY using AI?

OHMY is a design and technology studio based in Leamington Spa. It works with clients like Sonder, RCA Records, and The Emory hotel. We spoke with Joe Burke, OHMY’s co-founder and creative director, about how the studio uses AI, and how he feels 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?

I’m excited and nervous in equal measure.

It’s good to be a little nervous; it keeps you on your toes. It’s definitely an exciting time, but things are moving fast. I’ve never really experienced a shift quite like it.

I’m hoping AI dusts off the heart of what we do and human input becomes more and more valuable over time. I’m nervous for people in roles where they could lose big parts of their hard-earned careers.

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

We’re careful about the legal side. Client materials don’t get thrown into just any tool, as most of them use data for training. We pay for subscriptions to make sure client content isn’t used that way.

Anyone at the studio can use AI – we encourage it. The simple rule is – use it as much as you want, as long as you’re happy to admit it. If you’d be embarrassed to say you used AI on something, you probably shouldn’t.

We’ve also updated our statements of work and contracts to remove liability related to generative AI tools. That was done with AI and a solicitor.

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

I think it was when the latest version of ChatGPT started rendering things in chat. Things were moving fast, even though it was still pretty flaky.

At first, it was almost laughable – a tool that couldn’t even draw a straight line or create decent typography was never going to be a threat. But then, all of a sudden, it could do it well. It’s wild how quickly things changed.

The next step is exciting – linking these tools into the ones we already use. The idea that AI can sit inside the systems where you’re designing, sketching, and exploring, and then help expand those ideas, is going to be powerful.

But it was that major ChatGPT release that made me think, “OK, this is here now, and it’s not going away”

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

No training, just a lot of research and experimentation.

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

We use AI at different levels, from deep research to fleshing out concepts, reviewing, and spotting holes in our work. It’s genuinely useful having more “eyes” on things – it helps us find gaps in strategies that might have been missed.

As for shortcomings, it’s still only as good as what you put in. You need a strong strategic head, a sharp creative eye, and bags of taste. Otherwise, you’ll just get trash out the back. You can’t outsource those things.

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

Clients have budgets and want the most for their money. If the studio can deliver more for that budget, they’ll be happier.

We’ve had clients include prompts in briefs asking if we can push things using AI. No-one’s asked us not to yet.

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

It helps with some of the coding work and day-to-day formatting. We’ve also built a few internal tools using it to help with costing and estimating.

What’s one AI tool you’d recommend to other design studios?

I use a little tool called Talktastic multiple times a day. It lets me dictate to the computer in a much more natural way. It listens, tightens everything up, and uses AI to make sense of it.

Traditional dictation tools can be pretty basic. This one lets me throw three or four times more context into prompts I use in tools

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design/leader: Boyle&Perks co-founder Elaine Perks

Elaine Perks is co-founder of design and branding agency Boyle&Perks. The Brighton-based studio’s clients include Brighton & Hove Museums, University College London, and Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft

Design

What would your monograph be called?

Design can make a difference. I do believe that good design strategy and communications can make a difference, and bring about positive change. It’s the sentiment that has driven me for years, and it’s what continues to drive the work that we do.

What recent design work made you a bit jealous?

It’s not a recent project. But we recently saw Rejane Dal Bello talk at a Meeting Room event in Brighton, where she shared her work on the design of the AG2R La Mondiale cycling kit.

As a cycling-obsessed family – both my children race – the house is always full of kit, and debate on which team has the best kit. It was fascinating to hear Rejane talk us through the project, the challenge, and how she got to the iconic design that was so cutting edge for its time.

Rejane Dal Bello’s work for the AG2r La Mondiale cycling team

Also, the new IKEA in Brighton campaign from Mother. As a Brighton resident I can report this is spot on. I have fallen victim to our seagulls on more than one occasion, but I like to remind myself it’s good luck!

What’s an unusual place you get inspiration from?

One of the most enjoyable parts of our process is the research, which in itself often leads us down rabbit holes.

We’ve been fortunate enough to visit some incredibly unusual places in the name of research, from listening to ghost stories at one of Britain’s most haunted houses, to pebble-hunting in Bexhill-on-sea and from watching dissections in research laboratories to learning about mummification in museums!

Name something that is brilliantly designed, but overlooked.

I don’t know any creatives that aren’t allied to, or obsessed with, a specific type of pen. For me it’s Muji refillable gel ink pens. Available in a wide range of ink colours and tip sizes, these pens are a quiet staple for many creatives.

Among illustrators and designers, they’re almost cult-like in their following. I keep them everywhere – bag, pocket, desk. A good friend of mine regularly buys me a multi-pack for Christmas.

What object in your studio best sums up your taste?

It has to be our colourful meeting table from our friends at Very Good & Proper, an impulse purchase from their archive sale.

It has a bright orange top with four red legs and is a beautifully simple, functional circular design. It’s perfect to gather around to discuss work or to come together over lunch. It helpfully adds a big pop of strong colour to our otherwise neutral design space.

The table in Boyle&Perks’ studio

Leadership

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

While a student at the Royal College of Art, I worked on a live project to design the cover of a prestigious magazine. I was thrilled to make it to the final two, but devastated when I was told my design hadn’t been chosen because it lacked the “magic” of the other entry.

At the time, it felt crushing. But with distance, I realised the truth in it – I had designed the cover to satisfy my own agenda, rather than thinking about what was right for the magazine’s audience.

That experience taught me an invaluable lesson I’ve carried into every project since – always consider the audience, and focus on what needs to be communicated.

What’s an underappreciated skill that design leaders need?

Perseverance. It’s one of those quiet skills that rarely gets celebrated. It’s what got you into the industry in the first place, and it’s what sustains you once you’re in.

It’s what helped us build the studio from the ground up, keeps it running day-to-day, and drives us to adapt in an ever-changing climate.

It’s also a quality I try to instil in my students at the University of Brighton. When they face a difficult challenge, I encourage them to keep pushing to find a solution – even if it comes at the 11th hour!

Ultimately, design leadership isn’t just about vision or creativity. It’s about having the perseverance to navigate uncertainty and setbacks, and to bring your team along with you.

What keeps you up at night?

Menopause and insomnia.

What trait is non-negotiable in new hires?

We’re a small studio, so a happy demeanour and a can-do attitude are essential. And must like dogs!

Complete this sentence, “I wish more clients…

…saw us as collaborators. The most successful projects aren’t just about delivering a service, but about building a partnership rooted in mutual trust and respect, which allows us to co-create and find the best solutions together.

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“How did rebrand become such a dirty word?”

When is a rebrand not a rebrand? Sometimes, because it’s literally not a rebrand, it’s a brand refresh.

But sometimes, to all intents and purposes it is a rebrand – people just don’t want to use the r word.

Several times in the past few months, we’ve received emails about new visual identity projects that came accompanied with the same instructions. Some variation of – please note this is not a rebrand.

Sometimes that was the case, but sometimes it was the term itself that the studio and their client wanted to avoid.

I’ve spoken with various designers who say they don’t use the word rebrand with their clients, especially when it comes to the non-creative/marketing stakeholders elsewhere in the business. These people’s buy-in is vital, and so they need to remain unspooked.

Rebrand, as a word, as an idea, is seems to spook people.

I also spoke with someone connected to a charity that is considering a rebrand at the moment. They told me the word is snarkily thrown around by people who don’t like the plans, a withering shorthand for the current leadership’s wish to make changes.

“A loaded term”

So what the hell is going on?

“The word rebrand has become a bit of a loaded term,” one design leader who will remain anonymous told me.

“It signals wholesale change and often gets linked to bigger business shifts: recruitment drives, layoffs, restructuring, investment. In today’s turbulent climate, it can feel tone-deaf even when the actual intent is positive.”

They understand why clients have become skittish about the idea of a rebrand.

And most of the time, they say, “the need isn’t to start over. It’s about helping a brand stay current and relevant, giving in-house teams the tools to tell new stories across more platforms.

“That’s really an evolution of the design system – expanding its texture, flexibility and range – rather than a total reset. Framing it that way allows the work to move more smoothly through a business without sparking alarm.”

You know who again…

But how did rebrand become such a controversial word? According to Google’s search term history tool, it barely registered up until the start of 2023.

And it seems to have remained a fairly niche design and marketing industry term really until autumn last year, when it suddenly spiked. Rebrands, it seems, entered the mainstream chat.

Oh, autumn last year, lest you have forgotten, was Jaguar.

The idea that the Jaguar furore fundamentally rewired how we think about these seven simple letters is backed up by the related queries Google provides.

The word Jaguar appears time and again, way ahead of the few other brands that make the most-searched list – Pepsi, Facebook and Amazon, among others.

“Rebrand, as a word, as an idea, is seems to spook people.”

Jaguar was one of those incredibly rare moments when graphic design crashes into the mainstream media discourse.

It was all over social media. It was pulled apart in radio phone-ins. Uncles hitherto baffled by what graphic design even is asked designers about it at the family Christmas do.

And in our culture-war age, the debate was electrified by the accusation, in some quarters, that it was a “woke rebrand” – a heritage British company abandoning its stiff-upper-lip decorum for some sort of vegan, pro-trans madness. Fetch me a scotch Maureen, one of the cars is bright bloody pink!

This I think then fed back into the design world. Suddenly this pretty innocuous word became freighted with connotations that no client wanted to contemplate. And then came Cracker Barrel.

Like many Brits, I’d never even heard of a Cracker Barrel a month ago. It sounds like a slightly off-colour term that a man of a certain age might use to describe a woman who wears skirts above the knee. Make it a double Maureen, Rupert’s bringing that cracker barrel home for dinner!

(Someone in the know told me recently that Harvester is perhaps the closest equivalent we have here).

As with Jaguar, “Cracker Barrel rebrand” has become shorthand for an apparent brand design disaster.

A brand is not a logo

It’s an instructive example because, as is so often the case, rebrand here becomes reduced in many conversations to “new logo.” Those before and after images of the Cracker Barrel logo snaked across my social feeds like Japanese knotweed.

Stripped of any context, explanation or sense of strategy, it becomes a simple clarion call – old logo good! New logo bad!

Designers may love saying that “a brand is not a logo” – and to be fair, you do bloody love saying that – but that’s a distinction lost on most people.

And so what happens, as the design leader explains, is the logo reveal “dominates the narrative, putting undue pressure on a symbol instead of recognising that a brand is the sum of experiences.”

It seems incredible to me that two clearly exceptional situations – Jaguar and Cracker Barrel – may have torpedoed “rebrand” as a word people feel comfortable with.

But maybe it shouldn’t. Rebrands only make the news when there is a backlash, and so the word easily acquires unduly negative associations.

But interestingly, treading more carefully when it comes to framing a brand update can also backfire.

Writing about the derisive reaction to Walmart’s subtle brand refresh last year, FutureBrand’s managing Polly Hopkins warned, “It seems that when it comes to switching up your brand identity, no approach is without risk. You’re damned if you do push the boundaries, and damned if you don’t.”

And she pointed out that refreshes are much more common than full-on brand overhauls.

“As an industry we love to work on large-scale reinventions, but total rebrands are rare,” she wrote. “The majority of client briefs aren’t about reinvention, they are about enhancing existing equities.”

But there are times when rebrands “are exactly what’s needed,” the anonymous design leader explains. “When it comes from the C-suite, is rooted in business strategy, and is launched in a way that explains the why, it can be transformative.”

Many people will disagree, but Jaguar’s leadership would argue that’s precisely how its new look was unveiled.

But either way, the way we talk about branding seems to have changed. “The caution we’re seeing now is partly the legacy of high-profile missteps, which have made leaders more wary of the word,” the design leader says.

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