Liberty began in 1875, when Arthur Lasenby Liberty opened his first shop on Regent Street. Its influence on decorative design travelled surprisingly far – in Italy, Art Nouveau became known as ‘Stile Liberty’, such was the store’s association with the new style. That ability to absorb ideas, champion craft and still feel unmistakably itself seems to run through the brand even now.

I still have scraps of Liberty’s fabric in my home, from my Gran, Nan and Mum. Each feels of its own time, while still grounded in a common thread of history. Today though, it was the beautiful packaging for LBTY fragrance that caught my eye.

Pentagram refreshed Liberty’s identity in 2020, carefully redrawing the logotype from the original sign above the Great Marlborough Street entrance. They also created a custom display typeface, Lasenby Sans, named after founder Arthur Lasenby Liberty.

The LBTY name itself came from typographic shorthand discovered in Liberty’s archive, while each of the five fragrances takes its inspiration from an archive print. It’s a clever way of allowing the past to keep evolving rather than treating it as something untouchable.

When you have a brand with a pattern archive of around 50,000 designs, allowing them optimum space feels right. The oversized lids cap the glass bottles, making them objects to admire. The boxes are satisfyingly succinct and playful with their joyful letters.

We associate Liberty with its Tudor roots, William Morris’s Arts and Crafts and London’s swinging 60s scene. Now you can choose a fragrance to embrace your moment of Liberty.

Originally found at BPandO.

Some ice cream facts…

Did you know the ice cream cone was popularised at the 1904 World’s Fair in St Louis, Missouri? Before an edible container became the norm, Victorian street vendors would serve the ‘Penny Lick’ in a glass or ceramic bowl, and then just wipe it out for the next customer. It was banned eventually due to public health issues, understandably!

The ice cream van, with its call to sweltering children everywhere, is a British invention. One of the best-known tunes is O Sole Mio, although most of us probably know it more as ‘Just One Cornetto’. The first refrigerated van was designed by engineer Bryan Whitby in 1962. The Whitby Morrison van is still one of the most recognised ice cream vans around, shipped to 60 countries.

Ice cream has always had a strong visual language of its own, from hand-painted vans and striped awnings to bright menu boards, playful packaging and the particular sort of lettering that seems to belong only to summer. It is probably why designers are so drawn to it. Before anyone has tasted a flavour, the colours, names, type and packaging have already started doing their work.

We had a little taste of that ourselves when we worked on the branding and signage for Proper Vintage Cornwall, whose vintage ice cream set-up, including an adorable trike, had exactly that sort of cheerful, nostalgic charm.

The country that consumes the most? That’s New Zealand, at around 7.5 gallons per person per year. And although vanilla is still the most popular flavour, some very bizarre ones have been developed since.

Anya Hindmarch has the very popular Ice Cream Project in its London concept store, selling everything from Paxo stuffing ice cream to Tunnock’s Caramel and Kikkoman soy sauce. Crazy, but we love the packaging!

Ben and Jerry’s receive over 13,000 flavour suggestions a year! There really doesn’t seem to be a shortage of combinations.

Now some recipes. If you would like a recipe for something incredibly odd, and a little on brand, then here you can find pickle, yes, pickle ice cream. Maybe something a little more conventional? Try honey and lime ice cream, with 4 ingredients, optional added gin, and easy to make at home. Or Emma is always raving about the dairy-free healthy version, frozen bananas whipped up with whatever cupboard ingredients she can find! She hasn’t yet tried adding Bisto though…

(Title image ‘Ice, Ice, Baby’ by Juliane Boulanger)

Pepsi

Pepsi celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2023 with its first major logo update in 14 years. The redesign draws on earlier versions of the identity, bringing the Pepsi name back inside the familiar globe and giving the whole thing a definite retro feel.

I particularly like the way it looks backwards without simply recreating an old logo. The stronger type, black detailing and bolder colour palette make it feel familiar but much more confident.

Mountain Dew

Mountain Dew has also gone back to its roots. After years as ‘MTN DEW’, the full name has returned, making a much clearer connection with mountains, the great outdoors and adventure.

Illustration has been brought into the wider identity, with landscapes and richer natural colours giving it a very different character. There is plenty of nostalgia here too, but it feels warmer and more approachable than the sharper identity it replaces.

7UP

The early 7UP logos are great fun to look back through too. The latest identity keeps the familiar green at its heart, but adds brighter citrus colours and a much stronger sense of movement.

I think the idea of ‘UP’ comes through particularly well. Tilting the logo gives it a natural lift, while the brighter green and citrus colours make the whole identity feel fresher. Nicely done.

Looking back to move forward

What I like about all three is that none of them tries to forget what came before. Instead, each redesign picks up recognisable parts of the brand’s history and reworks them for a new generation. There is plenty of nostalgia, but not nostalgia for its own sake.

It is a useful reminder that refreshing a well-known identity does not always mean stripping everything away and starting again. Sometimes the strongest ideas are already there in the history of the brand.

Sources and further reading: 7UP logo history, 7UP redesign, Mountain Dew redesign and Pepsi redesign.

It sounds wonderfully niche at first, but the more you look at pasta, the more obvious the connection becomes. There is graphic design on the packet, illustration and typography in the advertising, industrial design in the machinery and, rather brilliantly, product design in the pasta itself.

The pasta itself is designed

That was the bit that really caught my attention. We tend to think of spaghetti, penne, farfalle or orecchiette as shapes that simply exist, but pasta doesn’t arrive at those forms by accident. They have grown from regional traditions, methods of making and cooking, and the tools used to produce them.

Shape has a practical job too. A tube, fold, ridge or hollow changes the way sauce, oil and other ingredients behave around the pasta. So there is the same balancing act you find in good product design: how something looks, how it is made and how well it actually does its job.

The Ulm exhibition explored exactly that relationship, from pasta shaped by hand to industrial extrusion and contemporary 3D printing. Appropriately, it was held at the former Ulm School of Design, where designer Walter Zeischegg had already been experimenting with pasta form in the 1960s.

When a car designer redesigned pasta

One of my favourite stories comes from 1983, when Italian pasta maker Voiello asked Giorgetto Giugiaro to invent a completely new pasta shape. Giugiaro was far better known for designing cars, including some of the most recognisable vehicles of the 20th century, so pasta was quite a departure.

The result was Marille, an extraordinary curved form resembling a double rigatone turned inside out. Its outer surface was smooth while the ridges were placed inside, designed to capture sauce. Even more wonderfully, Giugiaro found inspiration for the shape in the cross-section of an automotive door seal.

It looked terrific. Unfortunately, there was a problem. The different thicknesses of pasta didn’t cook at the same rate, and Marille disappeared from production. I rather love that. It is such a neat example of design having to be more than beautiful. A piece of pasta can fail a usability test just as effectively as a chair, kettle or car.

Pasta as graphic design

Then there is everything that happens before the pasta even reaches the pan. Vintage pasta advertising is glorious territory for a graphic designer. Bold illustration, expressive lettering and great slabs of colour transformed a very simple product into something filled with appetite, sunshine and a sense of place.

There is something lovely about graphic history surviving on ordinary things. We found the same thing when looking through some vintage stationery packaging. Things made to be used and thrown away can end up preserving typography, illustration and branding more vividly than something intended to be kept forever.

Food packaging gives designers an especially good canvas because it has to work hard. It needs to be noticed, recognised and understood quickly, but it can also communicate flavour, origin, quality and personality before you have tasted a thing. We went down a similar rabbit hole a few years ago with some particularly lovely chocolate packaging.

When fashion dresses the pasta

Perhaps the most exuberant example is the collaboration between Dolce & Gabbana and Pastificio Di Martino. Since 2017, the fashion house has covered the Italian pasta brand in the colours, patterns, landmarks and Mediterranean imagery we associate with its visual world.

It’s a great example of packaging becoming more than protection for the product inside. The packets become little pieces of Italian theatre in their own right, taking something inexpensive and familiar and treating it with the visual confidence of fashion packaging.

Jamie Oliver’s Pasta Dreams took a very different route. Design studio Otherway deliberately stepped away from the visual clichés of traditional Italian food and created something warmer, younger and decidedly psychedelic. Pasta ribbons, ingredients, blobs and swirls become patterns and animations, with peach, orange and brown giving everything a wonderfully retro flavour.

And then somebody 3D printed it

Of course, once designers start looking at the pasta itself as an object, it is only a matter of time before technology gets involved.

Barilla began exploring 3D printing as a way of creating pasta forms that conventional extrusion couldn’t easily achieve. That work developed into BluRhapsody, where pasta can curl, fold and build upwards into shapes that begin to look more like tiny pieces of architecture.

This is where pasta becomes almost impossible to separate from product design. The designer is thinking about structure, manufacture, material and appearance, except the finished object also has to survive boiling water and taste good.

We have been fascinated before by the way 3D printing allows designers to create forms that would be extremely difficult using traditional manufacturing. Our Breaking the Mould with 3D Printing post looked at the same principle applied to woven-looking concrete furniture. Pasta might be a rather more delicious material, but the attraction is remarkably similar.

A lot of design for a humble bowl of carbs

So perhaps pasta and design isn’t such a peculiar combination after all. From a hand-shaped piece of dough to an extrusion die, a vintage advertising poster, a brightly printed packet or a 3D model, somebody is making decisions about form, function and how we experience it.

I started with some lovely old posters and ended up with automotive designers and digitally printed pasta. That’s quite a journey for something I usually cover in tomato sauce.

Featured image sources: Al Dente: Pasta & Design, HfG-Archiv Ulm and vintage pasta advertising. Dolce & Gabbana imagery originally found via MOLD. Pasta Dreams imagery via Creative Review. 3D printed pasta imagery by BluRhapsody.

First up, Sellotape. These metal tins were produced from the brand’s beginnings in 1937 right through to the 1980s. Ours looks as though it might be a later design, perhaps from the 1970s or 1980s. Quite a lovely thing, and much better than wrapping the rolls in cellophane!

This bright red box of staples has the most adorable logo, known as the ‘Little Man’. It was introduced in 1958 by Rexel, a company that is still going strong. The business was founded by George Drexler, who moved from Prague to London and started his own stationery company in 1939.

I reckon these razor blades must have belonged to my Nan, as she sometimes cut hair and lived in ‘Ricky’. The retro illustration is lovely, although the man with a full head of hair doesn’t look particularly keen to have it cut! Durham Duplex began in New York in 1875, despite its rather British-sounding name, and its Sheffield roots date back to 1910. The company still uses a logo with a distinctly retro feel.

This box looks as though it could be from the 1970s, although the price label seems newer. The Durham Duplex system was quite revolutionary at the time because the blades could be sharpened almost endlessly. I love that these still have the price on them!

Tipp-Ex is an old familiar one. I can’t say I have used it in years, but it was pretty vital when I was doing homework with all my spelling errors. Thank goodness for spellcheck!

It began as a German company in 1958, initially selling correction paper for typewriters. The name combines the German word ‘Tipp’, meaning ‘to type’, with the Latin ‘Ex’, meaning ‘no more’. The box says ‘Made in West Germany’, so it must predate the 1990s. It resembles some 1960s designs I found, but I would be very surprised if it were that old because it hasn’t completely dried up!

There is a fascinating history of Scotch tape and its inventor, Richard Drew. The first patented Scotch tape was masking tape. Drew had made a bold promise that he could solve the masking problems encountered when painting cars.

Two-tone cars were all the rage in the 1920s, but producing clean paint effects without damaging the surface was tricky. It took him two years, but he cracked it. Magic Tape arrived in 1961. It was not only nearly invisible but could also be written on with pen, pencil or marker.

This tiny box of split pins feels pretty old! I can’t find anything definite about the brand online. There is a British kitchenware company called Tower, founded in 1912, so it is possible these came from them. Another possibility is a Tower brand founded in Wales in 1894, now owned by Schneider Electric, which began by making nails. My grandad was Welsh, which makes that theory rather appealing.

The ‘1 Gross’ puzzled me, but it is a unit of measurement. My dad would have known that! It means 144 items. So I still have no idea when the box is from, but it looks pretty cool.

Covering all bases, these Fisco drawing pins are also labelled ‘thumb tacks’. The lovely retro logo looks as though it is from the 1960s, although it was used for many years, so it is hard to be certain. Fisco was founded by Leo Fisher in a London cellar in 1940, making drawing pins and upholstery nails. The company later branched out into measuring tapes.

I found a similar box of these paper clips on Etsy, described as having been made by Scovill in England in the 1950s. They are still perfectly usable, with no rust at all!

I couldn’t find anything about the history of ‘Web’, but I love the logo. A little touch of gold glamour when stamping your bills ‘paid’!

Finally, my sister found these little jars of fabric paint. The ‘Colour-fun’ logo has a beautifully fluid retro feel. Dylon is still going strong today. It was founded in London in 1946, when the ‘make do and mend’ spirit was still very much alive.

Just a little dive into branding history! I do love a bit of retro, and it is lovely to see the layout, typography and design applied to simple things like stationery. All of it preserved in my dad’s rather random study!

London’s Museum of Brands feels very British. Which of course it is. Its collection takes you through 200 years of consumer culture, using packaging, advertising and familiar everyday objects as a lens through which to see our social history and changing tastes.

As a graphic designer I must say I have always been captivated by brands and their evolving designs. On the rare occasion I venture into those posher supermarkets, like Waitrose, I just love to look down the aisles of chocolate and coffee, the colourful boxes of tea, or elegant and vibrant wine labels, just to see the wealth of creativity displayed.

A strange fascination I know. The wonder of the Museum of Brands is that it displays the everyday, normal items that have been the wallpaper of our lives. It is in looking back that nostalgia kicks in and you can really appreciate how design becomes such a strong part of our memories.

Brands, memory and dementia

The collection grew from the work of consumer historian Robert Opie, who began collecting packaging and everyday objects more than fifty years ago. In 1984 he opened the first museum devoted to the history of packaging and advertising, and the collection eventually found its current home near Portobello Road in Notting Hill.

One exhibition that particularly caught my eye when I first wrote this in 2024 was Carey Bennett’s Memory & Remedy. The screen-print artist explored her relationship with familiar brands and memory, revisiting products she associated with childhood sickness through vivid colours and familiar typography. With both of her parents living with dementia and the roles reversed, those same everyday objects became part of a much more personal story about memory and care.

That relationship between brands and memory is something the Museum continues to explore through its Living Brands programme. It uses familiar products and multi-sensory activities to encourage reminiscence and connections for people living with dementia, their carers and families.

It is amazing how these empty wrappers and cardboard boxes really do take you back. Being a child of the 80s, everything seemed yellow and red and blue. Bright, stimulating and fun.

Looking back for design inspiration

We at Pickle have delved into branding history ourselves. Back in 2019 I had the pleasure of illustrating the original form of some much loved brands. Lyle’s Golden Syrup, Marmite, Colman’s Mustard and Cadbury’s chocolate to name a few. All are still quite recognisable, although altered over the years.

Next time I’m in London I must saunter around this fab place to get those creative juices flowing. Our fascination with retro often feeds into new designs too. You see it time and again when major brands revisit earlier parts of their visual history, whether that is an old logo, familiar typography or a colour palette that sparks a memory.

Perhaps that is part of the appeal. Familiar design makes connections in our brains before we have even really thought about it. As AI becomes a bigger part of the design world, there is something rather comforting about looking back at the handmade, printed and beautifully ordinary things that came before it.

There is always something we can learn from the past when looking to the future of brand design. If old packaging appeals to you too, I have also explored the subject in Vintage Stationery Packaging.

Lovat Parks kept us busy with wonderful projects to enhance their gorgeous holiday parks across the country. From park maps to kids activity sheets, water bottles to buckets for the beach, plenty to keep our creative juices flowing.

There was lots of lovely print this year. We partnered with Kernow Springs to create leaflets for their Nordic wood-fired hot tubs and creating numerous posters, guides and adverts for the wonderful Pencarrow House and Gardens.

At the beginning of the year one of our bright and beautiful websites went live, Camel CSA.

We also worked on some fab projects with Port Isaac based Harbour Treats. Our first colouring book, as well as tea towel designs and beer glasses.

We helped local businesses like The Nuthatch Barbers expand their customer base with flyers and swing signs.

One of my favourite projects was working with our clients Proper Vintage to design a brand for a local beach, Bossiney Cove, famous for Elephant Rock.

This year has meant meeting some wonderful new clients, but also affirming long standing relationships with clients such as Wadebridge Wines who kindly come to us each year for their wine tasting promotion and to expand the brand.

Well, that’s just a taster of some of the projects we have been involved with this year. Can’t wait to see what 2024 has in store! Do get in touch if you would like to work with us on your next project.

Albums such as Run-DMC’s 1984 self-titled album, Public Enemy and ‘It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back’, Beastie Boys and ‘Paul’s Boutique’, A Tribe Called Quest and ‘The Low End Theory’, Fugees and ‘The Score’, Lauryn Hill and ‘The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill’, Eminem and ‘The Slim Shady LP’, and more recent Jay-Z and ‘The Blueprint’, and Kendrick Lamar and ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’. 

Love the silver foil to represent the perorations of a sheet of stamps. Beautiful print quality, part of a series the studio has created, featuring post-punk, post-rock, psych, electronic and alternative albums.

Originally found at Design Boom.

Sometimes we work with images a client provides, or we can source our own. Often we make use of our illustration skills to help our clients stand out from the crowd.

Today we thought we would show you some of the adverts we have designed for our clients. If advertising is something you are interested in just get in touch and see what we can do for you. We worked with Jo and Co Home to create edits that reflect the seasons. Pencarrow House and Gardens uses some of our illustration to bring the rooms to life. For Camelford we started from scratch, helping with their ‘Camelford is Open’ campaign. Wadebridge Wines and Port and Starboard Fish and Chips both use recognisable elements from the branding, like hand drawn fish and wine bottles.

Occasionally, like BrandDufour, our client’s have a clear vision and we just help bring the elements together. We want the adverts to reflect the personality of our clients, be informative and fun but memorable too.

Over the last few years we have helped build a brand for Harbour Treats starting with their logo and our illustration the picturesque harbour, moving on to label design, signage and now a handy guide.

The guide features an illustrated map of the town, an eye-spy game and an inside look at how the transformation takes place! Lovely to design, we also print managed the project choosing to print the A5 guide on uncoated stock which gives a lovely texture.

You can see more of our work for Harbour Treats in our portfolio, if your interested in illustration you might enjoy our designs for Wadebridge Wines. If you would like to see more of our guides check out Cornish Horizons.

Wadebridge Wines are one of our oldest clients, it’s always a joy to expand their brand or work with them on the side projects that pop up now and then. Check out the Gin, Rum and Beer festivals we have designed for over the years.

Our clients wanted to have a voucher they could print themselves as well as a complement slip. To save on ink we created a design all in black that could then be printed on coloured paper. Vouchers can have the amount altered and the complement slip can double as a note for posting. (Pictured above)

Also extending a brand, we have been busily working with Lovat Parks getting their beautiful holiday villages ready to welcome visitors. From signage to leaflets to covid safe stickers, we’ve done it all this year! These are some envelopes we had custom printed in their brand blue simply highlighting their logo.

We also designed these signs to work as a notice board, featuring one of our illustrated maps. For more of our maps check out other projects we have created for Lovat Parks.

The weather magnets were great fun! A chance to illustrate some of Cornwall’s pretty varied weather.

Finally, our latest logo design for The Breakaway in Crickhowell in Wales. An ideal place to stay for cyclists, we incorporated that in our logo, as well as a nod to the hilly landscape and famous river. See more here.

The wooden lid is also a lovely touch, a real premium product with an expensive but well executed printing process. The whole thing invites you to run your fingers all over it!

Originally found at The Die Line.

For 2018, which I am sure you are aware, we brought you our Scandinavian-style-with-a-retro-nod illustrated poster featuring our pick of great British trees. For December we highlighted the Juniper, famed for its association with gin.

Funnily enough for 2019 we are sticking with edibles and considering packaging. Being in the business of graphic design, packaging is a bit of a passion. We have always loved visiting the likes of posh supermarket isles to peruse biscuit boxes, foil embossed chocolate bars and elegantly illustrated far-flung teas. For this next year we wanted to look back and see what our favourite brands looked like originally. A lot of the cupboard staples we have today have been on a gentle evolution but others have radically changed to follow the trends.

Rather than our more graphic vector illustrations, for this calendar poster Emma picked up her pen and got drawing. Filled with colour and personality, we can’t wait to show you our artwork! Hopefully it will be a welcome gift to our clients, and if anyone else would like one we would happily post it for just the cost of postage. It’s exciting to know that past year’s designs have graced fridges, study walls and kitchen cabinets from Barcelona to the US of A!

Watch this space as all will be revealed soon…