Creative Boom

A logo hiding in plain sight: Studio Blackburn folded Culture House's "C" and "H" into a little house symbol that runs right through the identity 👀

The new four-floor arts venue and library is part of Sunderland's Riverside regeneration, and the branding treats it like a welcoming living room for the whole city.

Read more: https://www.creativeboom.com/work/studio-blackburn-gives-sunderland-a-new-living-room-with-its-identity-for-culture-house/

A 170-year-old Italian sweet-maker has turned its factory into a real-life W***y Wonka world 👀

Design Bridge and Partners transformed 2,000 square metres of Leone's Turin site into the Happiness Factory – rainbow-tiled facades, an apothecary essence room, walls of embossed sweet moulds and a live production line running through it all. And it's gloriously tactile rather than screen-led.

Read more: https://www.creativeboom.com/work/design-bridge-and-partners-turns-leones-turin-sweet-factory-into-a-willy-wonka-world/

Ever noticed how wellness branding all looks the same? White space, muted palettes, soft rounded type 👀

Mother Design went completely the other way for Keen, the platform that connects people with psychic and spiritual advisors. Rather than reaching for minimalist calm, they built a warm, maximalist folk-art world with illustrator María Jesús Contreras.

It's bold, colourful, and smart about repositioning psychic guidance for the way we actually live now.

Full feature on Creative Boom. 👇
https://www.creativeboom.com/inspiration/mother-design-gives-psychic-platform-keen-a-folk-art-rebrand-that-takes-on-minimalist-wellness/

Whistles turned 50 – and instead of booking models, it fly-posted London with cryptic ads asking for 'open-minded women' 👀

No brand name, no explanation – just over 2,000 replies. Agency Weirdo picked 50 women aged 19 to 72, most of whom had never modelled, and shot them all in one day.

Proof that real people still beat a generated face.

Full feature on Creative Boom. 👇

Read more: https://www.creativeboom.com/inspiration/whistles-marks-50-years-by-casting-50-customers-found-through-mysterious-fly-posters-across-london/

100 tracks. 100 petri dishes of mould. One gloriously analogue album cover 👀

Belfast's Robocobra Quartet illustrated their five-hour album Hundred Pieces with around 100 dishes of fungus, grown at home by their saxophonist – each photographed dead-centre on white, one per track.

No brief, no moodboard, no big budget, and (their words) zero AI. Just a lovely, patient idea followed all the way through.

Full story on Creative Boom. 👇
Read more: https://www.creativeboom.com/inspiration/why-a-belfast-band-used-mould-to-design-their-album-cover/

She designed her way out of a bakery and into London's restaurant scene 👀

Innes Clark burned out during her illustration degree, took a bakery job to find her feet, and taught herself graphic design on the side. Now she makes the menus and posters you'll spot around London's restaurants.

She still works on loose sheets of paper, keeping every wobbly, human line – and she'll take that over AI any day.

Full feature on Creative Boom. 👇

Read more: https://www.creativeboom.com/inspiration/just-to-keep-drawing-the-tale-of-how-innes-clark-designed-her-way-out-of-a-bakery-and-into-restaurant-branding/

What if a drawing didn't have to stay on the paper? 👀

That's the idea behind Gallina Clueka, the project by Colombian artist Danna Gutiérrez, where a sketch might become a ceramic vessel, a piece of jewellery or a textile.

She works almost entirely by hand, so her fingerprints stay pressed into the clay – a little bit of her left in every piece.

Full feature on Creative Boom. 👇

Read more: https://www.creativeboom.com/inspiration/meet-danna-gutierrez-aka-gallina-clueka-the-project-turning-drawings-into-tactile-vessels-you-can-hold/

Some illustrations sit still. Thomke Meyer's practically move 👀

The Hamburg illustrator builds her work from music and cinema – thinking in moving images rather than static motifs – and it's carried her all the way to covers for Die Zeit, Elle and Der Spiegel.

The lovely part: she just wants her drawings to make you feel something.

Full feature on Creative Boom. 👇

Read more: https://www.creativeboom.com/inspiration/thomke-meyers-dynamic-illustration-are-inspired-by-sound-cinema-and-nature/

Remember when "merch" meant a forgettable tote bag you'd never actually use? 👀

Counter-Print reckon those days are over. Their new book, Merch: We Love Our Customers, makes the case that branded stuff is having a real comeback – used well, it's one of the most personal ways a brand can reach us.

Lovely case studies inside, and you even get to pick your own cover.

Full feature on Creative Boom. 👇

Read more: https://www.creativeboom.com/resources/counter-prints-new-book-makes-the-case-that-merch-is-making-a-comeback/

Hermès and Chanel came knocking – and Sarah Martinon gave them something no machine could draw 👀

Her illustrations have escaped the page completely: onto fabrics, across walls, into whole decorated rooms, and into a dreamy Chanel film where a model moves through her drawings until they become the space itself.

Proof that a personal, handmade drawing language is still the thing worth commissioning.



Full feature on Creative Boom. 👇
Read more: https://www.creativeboom.com/inspiration/how-sarah-martinons-drawings-escaped-the-page-to-dress-bodies-rooms-and-a-chanel-film/