Chocolate, Solar Panels, and Wide Body Kits.
Typography crimes from WHSmith, halftone patterns, and gold foil debossing.
Hello again, and a warm welcome to new subscribers â thanks for joining the club. Iâve found quite a few interesting design bits through January â you'll likely find something intriguing here, too.
WHSmithâs horrific rebrand âexperimentâ. đŹ
2023 ended with a joyously chaotic branding exercise from WHSmith, British retailer of train station sandwiches, pencil cases, and gift cards from Grandma.
Essentially, they dropped their serifâd WHSmith in favour of an eerily NHS-like WHS, presented with all the typographic sensitivities of a Word document. In some textbook backpedaling, the company confirmed that it was âJust an experiment, broâ, and we havenât heard anything since. Phew.
I decided to spend a whopping 60 seconds of my time on my own baseless rebrand for them. It still doesnât really mean anything, or do anything, but at least it looks better. This concludes the angsty portion of the newsletter.
Buddyâs Chococo branding đŤ
Exeter-based design studio Buddy Creative have refreshed the luxury chocolate company, Chococo. The brand makes use of a wide colour palette and geometric elements that look enticingly nibbleable. It makes me think of Elmer the Patchwork Elephant, picnics, board games, and simpler times.
Free audiobooks! đ
Iâve really been enjoying listening to books, so I have of course been bombarded with Audible ads. But whatâs better than giving your money to Jeff Bezos? Using a public library to access a huge range of audiobooks on your phone for free! Some libraries allow you to register even if you donât live nearby, expanding your options. Libby is my favourite app from a UX perspective, but theyâre all very serviceable.
Solar-powered website âď¸
Most small websites, including my own, are powered by shared hosting on a server farm somewhere in the internet ether. Not this one. LOWâTECH MAGAZINE is an online publication thatâs running on a Raspberry Pi in Barcelona, hooked up to some solar panels and a battery.
Sometimes, when there hasnât been enough sun, the site just⌠goes down. And thatâs okay; itâll be up again in the morning. While obviously impractical for most cases, Iâm rather fond of the concept of the internet going to sleep.
You can read much more about the magazineâs design, including the green design considerations to limit power consumption. Of course, I can shamelessly plug that Iâve written about this too đ
3-series halftone awesomeness
Lastly, highlighting a fun personal project from Sean Proctor that I spotted on LinkedIn. Halftone! Speed lines! Widebody kits! Chromatic aberration! From the pacing to the camera angles, itâs a beautifully stylised tribute to the design icon that is the BMW M3 E30.
Conclusion
Thanks for reading, and I hope you found something cool in that list. What was your favourite?
Itâs hard for me to pick, but I think the solar-powered website was the most exciting discovery for me. Most things involving a Raspberry Pi give me nerd-butterflies.
Finally, an unprompted gush of saccharine appreciation â thank you so much for reading. I get buckets of joy from writing these emails for a small group of people, and it feels like Iâm getting the hang of the concept. Iâm not here to grow or build or hustle, but to have a closer and more meaningful connection to friends and strangers in contrast to social media.
Best wishes,
Tom đ˘
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