Design thrives on the thrill of the new. So what happens when a studio is asked to work on a brief again, and again, and again?<\/p>\n
These \u201creturning briefs\u201d ask creatives to revisit the same event, festival, or framework, year after year \u2013 tasked with delivering something recognisably on-brand, and yet entirely new.<\/p>\n
But how do you sustain creativity when the parameters stay mostly consistent? Where\u2019s the line between evolution and repetition? And what does long-term collaboration reveal about the creative process itself?<\/p>\n
Few studios know that tension better than From Form<\/a>, who have designed the campaign for Amsterdam Museum Night for five years in a row.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n What began as a single commission has evolved into a creative partnership, and a kind of annual ritual. Each year, the Rotterdam-based studio is asked to reinvent the look and spirit of a night that celebrates the city\u2019s museums, without repeating itself or breaking what already works.<\/p>\n When they crafted the 2021 campaign, the studio introduced the idea of a flipbook as a vessel for storytelling. This concept evolved through the years and culminated in the 2023 campaign titled DIT DAT, DAAR (This, That, There)<\/a>.<\/p>\n From Form\u2019s 2023 campaign for Amsterdam Museum Night, titled DIT DAT, DAAR (This, That, There)<\/p>\n The flipbook \u2013 filled with images of the city\u2019s museums and their objects, and plastered with 500 custom stickers \u2013 became the star of the show. But last year, the team chose to retire it, and wipe the slate clean.<\/p>\n \u201cThat felt truly refreshing,\u201d says Ashley Govers, co-founder and creative director.<\/p>\n Under the surface of each chapter, the studio has built a visual lexicon that endures.<\/p>\n \u201cWe believe we\u2019ve crafted a Museum Night universe over the years \u2013 a language that speaks in colour, imagination, and rhythmic movement,\u201d says co-founder and creative director Jurjen Versteeg.<\/p>\n The Collector\u2019s Edition, From Form\u2019s 2025 campaign for Amsterdam Museum Night<\/p>\n Texture was key to this vocabulary, as was the analogue warmth From Form has become known for, both threads now re-emerging in the 2025 campaign, The Collector\u2019s Edition.<\/p>\n To mark Museum Night\u2019s 25th anniversary, the team returned to the idea at the heart of every museum \u2013 collecting.<\/p>\n The campaign celebrates that notion by treating Museum Night itself as \u201ca collection of collections,\u201d since the event brings together dozens of museums, each with its own archives, objects, and stories, into a single, citywide experience.<\/p>\n To flesh out the visual world, From Form looked to the 1990s, the decade the event began, and an era synonymous with collector culture.<\/p>\n They wanted the theme of collecting to feel approachable rather than academic. \u201cWhen you think of a museum as a carefully preserved collection, it can feel quite overwhelming,\u201d Versteeg explains. \u201cBut we wanted to make collecting more accessible than that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n So instead of focusing on institutions and archives, the campaign draws from the simple joy of 1990s collector culture \u2013 Flippos, Tamagotchis, Happy Meal toys, football cards \u2013 the everyday treasures that anyone could covet and trade.<\/p>\n The Collector\u2019s Edition marks a continuation of a collaboration that keeps finding new ways to resonate.<\/p>\n Each year\u2019s work strengthens the client\u2019s trust, and with that trust comes greater pressure from within the studio to deliver something unexpected.<\/p>\n Yet that repetition has its upside \u2013 familiarity with the brief has evolved into creative fluency, giving the team the confidence to keep pushing ideas further each year.<\/p>\n \u201cWorking on something that returns each year means building a long-term relationship, not only with the client, but with the project itself,\u201d says Versteeg.<\/p>\n The Collector\u2019s Edition, From Form\u2019s 2025 campaign for Amsterdam Museum Night<\/p>\n \u201cYou get to know its character, its rhythm, and what feels right for it. That familiarity brings confidence, but also the challenge of keeping things fresh and surprising yourself. With a one-off project, you define, create, and let go; a recurring one feels more like a conversation that evolves over time.<\/p>\n \u201cEach edition adds a new layer, pushing you to see it from new angles every year.\u201d<\/p>\n With this familiarity comes a shared language, and with trust, the space to take creative risks without second-guessing every move.<\/p>\n \u201cInstead of presenting multiple options, we deliver a single vision each year,\u201d says Rabbithole\u2019s<\/a> creative director, Tim Dee, describing the studio\u2019s approach to its ongoing work for the Leeds International Festival of Ideas (LIFI).<\/p>\n Rabbithole\u2019s identity for LIFI 2025<\/p>\n Since the partnership began in 2021, the Leeds-based team has been crafting identities that unpack both the complexity and the vibrancy of LIFI \u2013 which unites thinkers, writers, creatives, and experts across science, technology, politics, and culture \u2013 while striking the right chord every year.<\/p>\n As the relationship has matured, so too has the narrative core of each edition, evolving in step with the festival itself.<\/p>\n \u201cFive years ago, the themes leaned more scientific and highbrow, which we realised risked feeling too academic and less welcoming to the diverse audience the festival wanted to reach,\u201d says Dee. \u201cSince then, the art direction has steadily become more accessible and fun, creating a much broader appeal.\u201d<\/p>\n Rabbithole\u2019s 2024 identity for LIFI centred on abstract metallic faces<\/p>\n It\u2019s true. In 2024, Rabbithole created a suite of metallic faces<\/a> that mirrored the audience\u2019s expressions seen in the festival\u2019s footage \u2013 an idea that immediately landed with clarity and impact.<\/p>\n Building on that success, the 2025 edition introduces a gang of \u201csquidgems\u201d \u2013 cherubic, balloon-like characters.<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough our client trusts and accepts our reasoning for changing the identity each year, there can still be a natural reluctance to move on from something that has worked so well,\u201d says strategy director Mark Martin.<\/p>\n Rabbithole\u2019s identity for LIFI 2025<\/p>\n \u201cThis year\u2019s campaign, therefore, became more of an evolution than a complete departure. We chose to build on what made the 2024 faces so impactful, while still introducing something new. The squidgems strike that balance \u2013 both a continuation of what audiences especially connected with last year, and a fresh direction.\u201d<\/p>\n Giving the squidgems ears, legs, and a fuller anatomical form opened up playful new possibilities. They can now take on collective behaviours that bring them to life, whether that\u2019s gathering in herds, or lining up for a conga.<\/p>\n While every edition must feel fresh, a recurring brief isn\u2019t a licence for unfettered experimentation.<\/p>\n Rabbithole\u2019s identity for LIFI 2025<\/p>\n To keep each chapter connected to the one before and after it, certain anchors stay fixed, giving everything else room to evolve.<\/p>\n Across LIFI\u2019s identities, a few pillars remain the same \u2013 the logo, the typeface, the bright pink hero hue, as well as the 3D artistry of Joseph T\u00f6reki, who returns as a collaborator each year.<\/p>\n This gives the work its stylistic continuity, while the thematic art direction brings constant motion.<\/p>\n Continuity, then, becomes less of a limitation and more of a language \u2013 one that lets studios retain tone, rhythm and philosophy, while freely changing the visual vocabulary.<\/p>\n But sustaining a language year after year demands systems and rituals, and not just inspiration. Creativity, at scale, depends on the steady architecture of process.<\/p>\n STUDIO HERRSTR\u00d6M\u2019s rebrand for Spotify\u2019s Front Left<\/p>\n STUDIO HERRSTR\u00d6M<\/a> has been putting this philosophy into practice through its long-running collaboration with Spotify, developing more than 30 playlist brands to date.<\/p>\n The project subtly reframes what a returning brief can be \u2013 not the evolution of one identity over time, but the repeated challenge of building new ones within the same creative structure, across vastly different cultural contexts.<\/p>\n Though every commission begins from the same premise \u2013 design a brand for a playlist \u2013 the studio treats each as a cultural problem to solve. Guided by its THE ECHO design framework, the studio immerses itself in the world of each playlist, uncovering local references, histories, and visual codes, before ever putting pencil to paper.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause the foundation changes each time \u2013 different audience, region, genre, local visual codes \u2013 each playlist earns its own visual logic,\u201d says founder and creative director Eric Herrstr\u00f6m.<\/p>\n As distinctive as they are, each playlist must still operate within Spotify\u2019s global design ecosystem, a structure that connects them through shared principles of clarity, hierarchy, and recognisability.<\/p>\n STUDIO HERRSTR\u00d6M\u2019s identity for Aquarela Brasileira<\/p>\n This underlying order binds the work together, even as the studio stretches its expressive potential.<\/p>\n \u201cOur freedom lives in texture, custom lock-ups, application, cultural motifs, local visual references, and colour combinations,\u201d says Herrstr\u00f6m.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve pushed in areas like custom graphic systems, hand-drawn illustrations, or 3D graphics, and culturally tied patterns, while always still respecting the Spotify framework.\u201d<\/p>\n When working on the identity for the Top M\u00e9xico playlist \u2013 a collection of the country\u2019s biggest tracks \u2013 this act of cultural mining led the team to an image of a sarape de Saltillo, a traditional textile known for its bright colours and layered lines.<\/p>\n A symbol of national pride, cultural heritage, and craftsmanship, the textile not only served as a conceptual goldmine, but its weave also lent itself to graphic interpretation.<\/p>\n STUDIO HERRSTR\u00d6M\u2019s identity for Top M\u00e9xico<\/p>\n \u201cEverything clicked when we realised we could use the line thicknesses to reflect the vast diversity of artists and music that\u2019s featured on the playlist,\u201d says Herrstr\u00f6m. The colour-blocked lines, which move and shift in motion, became the structural backbone of the visual system.<\/p>\n As Herrstr\u00f6m explains, it\u2019s this process of narrative discovery that keeps the work from repeating itself.<\/p>\n Grounded in cultural insight, the team avoids slipping into stylistic reflex, and with each success, that clarity feeds confidence.<\/p>\n \u201cIt gives us permission to push further,\u201d says Herrstr\u00f6m. \u201cBecause we\u2019ve proven we can do meaningful and culturally attuned work, we also dare to present directions that we may not have considered earlier.<\/p>\n \u201cIn that sense, our long-term partnership has made the work much better.\u201d<\/p>\n Behind the work\u2019s consistency and success is a clear conviction that inspiration alone can\u2019t sustain creativity over time; process is what keeps it alive.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t rely on moodboards,\u201d says Herrstr\u00f6m. \u201cYou need a rigorous structure, team discipline, and relentless curiosity about context. By systematising how we approach each project and always starting fresh, we preserve creative vitality even under repetition.\u201d<\/p>\n