BEAN & GONE
ARTS AND CULTURE | 2023
Brand identity for a company built around the art of slowing down.
Introduction
Bean & Gone make soy-based candles in vessels designed to be reused. The product itself is a quiet argument against disposability — an everyday object that asks something of the person who buys it, and rewards them for it. The brief was to build a brand identity that carried that ethos without lecturing, something that felt genuinely characterful rather than performing sustainability as a trend. It is a distinction that matters more than it might seem: there is a significant difference between a brand that signals its values and one that embodies them, and that difference lives almost entirely in the quality of the design decisions.
Bean & Gone make soy-based candles in vessels designed to be reused. The product itself is a quiet argument against disposability — an everyday object that asks something of the person who buys it, and rewards them for it. The brief was to build a brand identity that carried that ethos without lecturing, something that felt genuinely characterful rather than performing sustainability as a trend. It is a distinction that matters more than it might seem: there is a significant difference between a brand that signals its values and one that embodies them, and that difference lives almost entirely in the quality of the design decisions.
Services
Bespoke Logotype
Brand Identity and Direction
Packaging Design
Bespoke Logotype
Brand Identity and Direction
Packaging Design
The Challenge
Brands with a sustainability angle can easily tip into listing credentials rather than extending an invitation. The visual language of ethical consumer goods has become its own kind of convention — earthy palettes, rounded sans-serifs, a certain knowing restraint — and working within that convention risks blending into a category rather than defining one. The challenge was to create something warm and singular enough that people genuinely wanted to spend time with it, trusting that the values would come through in the texture of the identity rather than its messaging. Sustainable brand design works best when sustainability is the foundation, not the headline.
The Soltuion
The client gave real creative freedom to explore, which is rare and worth honouring. A system of scent symbols was developed — abstract motifs derived from smoke forms, each one gestural and slightly unpredictable, resisting the kind of finish that makes things feel manufactured rather than made. The ampersand became the unifying element across the identity: a small typographic argument for togetherness and shared moments, for the kind of domestic ritual that a candle, at its best, can hold.
The result is a brand identity that feels handmade without being precious, rooted without being earnest. It sits comfortably alongside the product it represents — an object designed for reuse, carried by a visual language designed to last. Small business branding at its most considered: nothing wasted, everything intentional.
Brands with a sustainability angle can easily tip into listing credentials rather than extending an invitation. The visual language of ethical consumer goods has become its own kind of convention — earthy palettes, rounded sans-serifs, a certain knowing restraint — and working within that convention risks blending into a category rather than defining one. The challenge was to create something warm and singular enough that people genuinely wanted to spend time with it, trusting that the values would come through in the texture of the identity rather than its messaging. Sustainable brand design works best when sustainability is the foundation, not the headline.
The Soltuion
The client gave real creative freedom to explore, which is rare and worth honouring. A system of scent symbols was developed — abstract motifs derived from smoke forms, each one gestural and slightly unpredictable, resisting the kind of finish that makes things feel manufactured rather than made. The ampersand became the unifying element across the identity: a small typographic argument for togetherness and shared moments, for the kind of domestic ritual that a candle, at its best, can hold.
The result is a brand identity that feels handmade without being precious, rooted without being earnest. It sits comfortably alongside the product it represents — an object designed for reuse, carried by a visual language designed to last. Small business branding at its most considered: nothing wasted, everything intentional.
BIOPHILIA
ENVIRONMENT | 2019
Holding space for ecological grief through experimental book design.
Introduction
Biophilia began personally, as most honest projects do. The word itself — the hypothesis that humans hold an innate need to connect with other living systems — felt like both a diagnosis and a direction. This self-published editorial design project was an attempt to make that connection tangible: to create an object that didn't explain our relationship to nature so much as recreate the feeling of it. It sits in a tradition of design that takes the physical seriously, where material choices aren't aesthetic decisions so much as arguments.
Biophilia began personally, as most honest projects do. The word itself — the hypothesis that humans hold an innate need to connect with other living systems — felt like both a diagnosis and a direction. This self-published editorial design project was an attempt to make that connection tangible: to create an object that didn't explain our relationship to nature so much as recreate the feeling of it. It sits in a tradition of design that takes the physical seriously, where material choices aren't aesthetic decisions so much as arguments.
Services
Art Direction
Book Design
Art Direction
Book Design
The Challenge
The project occupied an uncomfortable and generative space between academic inquiry and emotional document — a difficult tension to hold in a single publication. Drawing on the writing of environmental thinkers including George Monbiot and Andrew Balmford, alongside found imagery gathered from Somerset's woodlands and flora collected by hand, scanned and photographed, the challenge was to make something rigorous without making something cold. Environmental design and illustration can easily become earnest, can reduce complex ecological grief to a visual checklist of leaves and data points. The ambition here was the opposite: to make a book that made you feel the loss before you understood it.
The Solution
The physical construction of the publication was as considered as its content. Four different paper stocks shift across the book, each chosen to evoke a different quality of the natural world — the rough, the translucent, the dense, the fragile. Pages are pierced with holes that accumulate as you move through the publication, representing degradation and loss as something you feel in your hands rather than just read about. This is editorial design working at the level of sensation, not just communication.
In the UK, the relationship to biodiversity is quieter and more easily overlooked than most other places in the world— and it required a design language equally nuanced. Each chapter forms around a central bind but unfolds into a poster, asking the reader to actively change their relationship with the page as they move through it. The result is a piece of environmental editorial that functions as both publication and object: something to be held, unfolded, and returned to. A piece of graphic design made in response to the natural world, and in some small way, on its behalf.
The project occupied an uncomfortable and generative space between academic inquiry and emotional document — a difficult tension to hold in a single publication. Drawing on the writing of environmental thinkers including George Monbiot and Andrew Balmford, alongside found imagery gathered from Somerset's woodlands and flora collected by hand, scanned and photographed, the challenge was to make something rigorous without making something cold. Environmental design and illustration can easily become earnest, can reduce complex ecological grief to a visual checklist of leaves and data points. The ambition here was the opposite: to make a book that made you feel the loss before you understood it.
The Solution
The physical construction of the publication was as considered as its content. Four different paper stocks shift across the book, each chosen to evoke a different quality of the natural world — the rough, the translucent, the dense, the fragile. Pages are pierced with holes that accumulate as you move through the publication, representing degradation and loss as something you feel in your hands rather than just read about. This is editorial design working at the level of sensation, not just communication.
In the UK, the relationship to biodiversity is quieter and more easily overlooked than most other places in the world— and it required a design language equally nuanced. Each chapter forms around a central bind but unfolds into a poster, asking the reader to actively change their relationship with the page as they move through it. The result is a piece of environmental editorial that functions as both publication and object: something to be held, unfolded, and returned to. A piece of graphic design made in response to the natural world, and in some small way, on its behalf.
FM
MUSIC | 2023
A brand identity rooted in Manchester's musical DNA.
Introduction
Growing up going to gigs in Manchester changes how you understand music. Here it isn't background — it's infrastructure, community, something that gets passed down through venues and record shops and the particular energy of a city that has always taken sound seriously. When James approached this studio to build the identity for FM Audio and Sound Production, it felt less like a brief and more like an opportunity to put something back into a place that had given a great deal. Music branding in a city with this history carries weight. It asks you to know what you're referencing and why.
Growing up going to gigs in Manchester changes how you understand music. Here it isn't background — it's infrastructure, community, something that gets passed down through venues and record shops and the particular energy of a city that has always taken sound seriously. When James approached this studio to build the identity for FM Audio and Sound Production, it felt less like a brief and more like an opportunity to put something back into a place that had given a great deal. Music branding in a city with this history carries weight. It asks you to know what you're referencing and why.
Services
Bespoke Logotype
Brand Identity and Direction
Printed Ephemera
Bespoke Logotype
Brand Identity and Direction
Printed Ephemera
The Challenge
The challenge was honouring a genuinely rich legacy — Factory Records, the Haçienda, a city that built an entire aesthetic around the relationship between sound and image — without being nostalgic about it. Nostalgia is the wrong register for a working studio. James' practice spans genres and contexts, from intimate acoustic production to large-scale live sound. The identity needed to hold that range without becoming generic, to feel of Manchester without becoming a mood board of its own mythology.
The Solution
FM radio waves became the visual foundation — but not as literal illustration, rather as a starting point for mark-making. Motifs were created with ink, vectorised, then translated into 3D motion graphics, giving the system energy and physicality that a purely static identity couldn't carry. Sound is movement; the identity needed to move too.
A custom monogram anchors the system, while bespoke gradients allow the palette to shift across genres without losing coherence. The result is a music brand identity that feels genuinely of its city — specific, adaptable, and built to move. Not a tribute to what Manchester made, but a continuation of what it keeps making.
The challenge was honouring a genuinely rich legacy — Factory Records, the Haçienda, a city that built an entire aesthetic around the relationship between sound and image — without being nostalgic about it. Nostalgia is the wrong register for a working studio. James' practice spans genres and contexts, from intimate acoustic production to large-scale live sound. The identity needed to hold that range without becoming generic, to feel of Manchester without becoming a mood board of its own mythology.
The Solution
FM radio waves became the visual foundation — but not as literal illustration, rather as a starting point for mark-making. Motifs were created with ink, vectorised, then translated into 3D motion graphics, giving the system energy and physicality that a purely static identity couldn't carry. Sound is movement; the identity needed to move too.
A custom monogram anchors the system, while bespoke gradients allow the palette to shift across genres without losing coherence. The result is a music brand identity that feels genuinely of its city — specific, adaptable, and built to move. Not a tribute to what Manchester made, but a continuation of what it keeps making.
GREEN REFUGE
ARTS AND CULTURE | 2023
Art direction and visual identity for Green Refuge, an augmented reality heritage trail commissioned for London Festival of Architecture 2023.
Introduction
Green Refuge was commissioned for the London Festival of Architecture 2023, transforming Clapham Common into a living archive of sanctuary stories — from Blitz-era shelters to the Caribbean communities of the Windrush generation who made the common their own across decades. The project asked a question that felt urgent and personal: what does a place remember, and who gets to tell that story? It was one of the most considered briefs this studio has worked with — a commission that sat at the intersection of heritage design, environmental storytelling, and community history.
Green Refuge was commissioned for the London Festival of Architecture 2023, transforming Clapham Common into a living archive of sanctuary stories — from Blitz-era shelters to the Caribbean communities of the Windrush generation who made the common their own across decades. The project asked a question that felt urgent and personal: what does a place remember, and who gets to tell that story? It was one of the most considered briefs this studio has worked with — a commission that sat at the intersection of heritage design, environmental storytelling, and community history.
Services
Bespoke Logotype
Brand Identity and Direction
Printed Ephemera
Signage
Web Design
Bespoke Logotype
Brand Identity and Direction
Printed Ephemera
Signage
Web Design
The Challenge
The brief was to create an augmented reality heritage trail that could hold the weight of these histories without flattening them. Reading deeper into the stories of displacement, climate crisis, and the relationship between Black and Brown communities and green space in Britain, it became clear that the design couldn't just illustrate these narratives. It had to be shaped by them. The typography needed to feel like it had grown from the ground itself — not applied to the landscape, but drawn out of it. Environmental illustration for public space carries a particular responsibility: the people whose histories you are representing will stand in the same place the work inhabits.
The Solution
A custom typeface was developed from the common's own flora — cow parsley, dock, wildgrass — letting the landscape author its own visual identity. Type as testimony. Each letterform carries something of the place it came from, making the act of reading itself a kind of attention.
The augmented reality layer allowed stories to surface only in place, only in context, honouring the specificity of where these histories actually lived. This wasn't illustration applied to a space — it was design that could only exist in that space, inseparable from the ground it stood on. The result was a piece of public graphic design and environmental storytelling that moved between the physical and the digital without losing the weight of either. Design as reciprocity: the common had sheltered people across centuries. This was a small way of sheltering it back.
The brief was to create an augmented reality heritage trail that could hold the weight of these histories without flattening them. Reading deeper into the stories of displacement, climate crisis, and the relationship between Black and Brown communities and green space in Britain, it became clear that the design couldn't just illustrate these narratives. It had to be shaped by them. The typography needed to feel like it had grown from the ground itself — not applied to the landscape, but drawn out of it. Environmental illustration for public space carries a particular responsibility: the people whose histories you are representing will stand in the same place the work inhabits.
The Solution
A custom typeface was developed from the common's own flora — cow parsley, dock, wildgrass — letting the landscape author its own visual identity. Type as testimony. Each letterform carries something of the place it came from, making the act of reading itself a kind of attention.
The augmented reality layer allowed stories to surface only in place, only in context, honouring the specificity of where these histories actually lived. This wasn't illustration applied to a space — it was design that could only exist in that space, inseparable from the ground it stood on. The result was a piece of public graphic design and environmental storytelling that moved between the physical and the digital without losing the weight of either. Design as reciprocity: the common had sheltered people across centuries. This was a small way of sheltering it back.
JOEL TELLIER
ARTS AND CULTURE | 2022
A chromatic system for a former VICE Creative Director whose work refuses a single category.
Introduction
Joel Tellier is a Creative Director whose practice crosses branding, art direction, motion, and experiential design with genuine range and restlessness. This wasn't a project about finding things to show — Joel's output is vast and consistently strong. The challenge was building a portfolio architecture that could hold the full scope of what he does without flattening it into a highlight reel, and without imposing an order that would misrepresent how his mind actually works. Portfolio and website design at this level is less graphic design than it is curatorial problem-solving.
Joel Tellier is a Creative Director whose practice crosses branding, art direction, motion, and experiential design with genuine range and restlessness. This wasn't a project about finding things to show — Joel's output is vast and consistently strong. The challenge was building a portfolio architecture that could hold the full scope of what he does without flattening it into a highlight reel, and without imposing an order that would misrepresent how his mind actually works. Portfolio and website design at this level is less graphic design than it is curatorial problem-solving.
Services
Brand Identity and Direction
Curation
Web Build
Web Design
Brand Identity and Direction
Curation
Web Build
Web Design
The Challenge
A portfolio that tries to be everything risks feeling like nothing. Joel's work resists easy categorisation, which is a genuine strength but also a real structural problem. The solution needed to organise without prescribing — to give visitors a way in without telling them where to arrive. Most portfolio websites solve this problem by narrowing: they choose a lane and stay in it. That wasn't an option here, and finding a system that could hold genuine breadth without losing coherence required thinking about navigation as an experience rather than a utility.
The Solution
A chromatic logic runs through the site: red for Branding, blue for Art Direction, yellow for Motion. Where work occupied a liminal space — Branding + Motion coded in orange, for instance — the sub-system extended naturally from the same logic, creating orientation without hierarchy. Visitors navigate by instinct as much as intention, led by colour rather than category.
Randomised navigation means the portfolio actively rewards return visits — something different surfaces each time, reflecting the restlessness that defines Joel's practice and refusing the fixed hierarchy that most creative portfolio design defaults to. The result is a website that functions less like a CV and more like a mind: structured enough to be navigable, open enough to surprise. Joel was a generous collaborator throughout, offering real creative freedom. The main task was simply doing justice to the scale and quality of what he has made.
A portfolio that tries to be everything risks feeling like nothing. Joel's work resists easy categorisation, which is a genuine strength but also a real structural problem. The solution needed to organise without prescribing — to give visitors a way in without telling them where to arrive. Most portfolio websites solve this problem by narrowing: they choose a lane and stay in it. That wasn't an option here, and finding a system that could hold genuine breadth without losing coherence required thinking about navigation as an experience rather than a utility.
The Solution
A chromatic logic runs through the site: red for Branding, blue for Art Direction, yellow for Motion. Where work occupied a liminal space — Branding + Motion coded in orange, for instance — the sub-system extended naturally from the same logic, creating orientation without hierarchy. Visitors navigate by instinct as much as intention, led by colour rather than category.
Randomised navigation means the portfolio actively rewards return visits — something different surfaces each time, reflecting the restlessness that defines Joel's practice and refusing the fixed hierarchy that most creative portfolio design defaults to. The result is a website that functions less like a CV and more like a mind: structured enough to be navigable, open enough to surprise. Joel was a generous collaborator throughout, offering real creative freedom. The main task was simply doing justice to the scale and quality of what he has made.
