Lifestyle brands, built to last longer than a trend.
Lifestyle is the most crowded category we work in and the one where the temptation to follow the current look is strongest. It's also the one where following it ages worst, because the whole category moves together and then all of it dates at once.
The problem with looking current
Every few years consumer branding converges. A muted palette, a geometric sans, a lot of white space, and for a while everyone looks tasteful and nobody looks like themselves.
It isn't that these are bad decisions. It's that they're everyone's decisions, and a brand that can be swapped with three competitors without anyone noticing hasn't done its job.
Distinctiveness beats taste
The commercial evidence is fairly consistent: brands grow through distinctive assets that people recognise quickly, not through being the most refined thing in the category.
So we push for something ownable. A colour, a shape, a way of writing, a photographic treatment. Something that survives being seen at thumbnail size on a phone, which is how most of your brand will actually be encountered.
Designed for where it lives
A lifestyle brand exists on a shelf, in a feed, on a parcel and in someone's kitchen. Each is a different set of constraints and none of them is the presentation deck.
We design for the smallest and worst case first. If it works there, the hero shot takes care of itself.
Common questions
- Do you do packaging?
- Yes, as part of an identity. Packaging is usually where a consumer brand is genuinely decided, so designing it separately from the identity rarely works well.
- We're a new brand with no budget for everything. Where should we start?
- Positioning and one distinctive asset, applied consistently. A modest identity used properly beats an elaborate one applied inconsistently, and it leaves budget for the photography that will actually sell the thing.