The Edit: five new projects including Soulgarden by Studio 87

Each and every day, we're lucky to discover dozens of interesting and inspiring projects from around the world. From global identities and campaigns to side projects and independently published books, The Edit is home to five of them; every two weeks.

With plans to expand across Europe, Soulgarden is a Germany-based landscape architect for high-end private gardens. Through their elegant design aesthetic, their mission is to make homeowners fall back in love with their gardens and re-establish a deeper connection to their land. Tackling the design of Soulgarden’s visual identity as part of a competition project, Studio 87 chose to contrast the digital forms of modernist sans serif typography with photography of land in its natural state – the architecture of our world long before any architects came into fruition. Set in CoType Foundry’s Aeonik Pro, the logotype takes on an entirely lowercase arrangement, elegantly complementing the company name’s consistent rounded forms.

Located nearby to the rocky peninsula that separates Rio de Janeiro’s iconic Copacabana and Ipanema beaches, Arp is the Arpoador Hotel’s much-loved beachside bar and restaurant. Alongside a full renovation and the introduction of renowned chef Roberta Sudbrack’s cuisine, Brazillian creative practice ANYWHERE was commissioned to replenish the bar’s visual identity. Taking inspiration from Brazillian ‘tropical modernism’, the studio created an identity that’s pulsating with both sophistication and relaxation. A straightforward yet exquisitely-crafted custom logotype represents the bar’s name through three geometric lowercase letterforms, made in reference to the Arpoador’s perfectly circular windows. It’s accompanied by a set of circular motifs and patterns, each a subtle hint towards the beach umbrellas one might look down upon from the Arpoador balconies. Truly modernist in form, the identity evokes a tension between the figurative and the abstract.

Founded by Ruby Ren and Eric Wang, two influential business leaders in the Chinese design industry, House of Wang is a luxury furniture store that offers a curated selection of brands at the intersection of art and lifestyle. Aiming to reflect the store’s avant-garde selection, Hong Kong-based studio Oddity created an ultra-minimalistic logotype using only five vertical lines and a single circle. Reminiscent of binary code while being almost alien-like due to its vague association with the brand name, the mark acts as a robust graphic texture alongside pared-back sans serif typography and imagery.

Owned and operated by a mother and daughter team, Korai Kitchen is a Bangladeshi restaurant that brings homestyle authentic cooking and decades of experience to Jersey City, New Jersey. Created by graphic designer Badal Patel, their identity is a celebration of their unique cuisine and culture, which “has too often been grouped into and overshadowed by Indian culture.” To make the distinction as prominent as possible, Patel introduced Bengali script and a multitude of expressions, such as ‘No Chicken Tikka Masala’ to guarantee no confusion between Korai’s cuisine and the overly popular westernised dish. Typographically, Patel crafted a multi-faceted language consisting of Typeverything’s Ballpoint Script, Colophon Foundry’s Mabry and Sharp Type’s Sharp Grotesk, successfully reflecting the restaurant’s motherly, bold and jovial ethos.

Established in Canada, skincare brand East 29th is aiming to combine skincare with self-care and build “a movement that embodies being softer both inside and out.” Approached with nothing but a serum and a story, Vancouver-based design studio ZAK was commissioned to develop East 29th’s vision into a fully-realised, commercial brand. Imagining a world where everyone can feel their best, most-natural self, they created an elegant yet playful identity that centres around a considered custom logotype. Using Lost Type Co-op’s Moriston as a base for its “inherently sophisticated and classical” qualities, ZAK constructed a simple flourish between the ‘2’ and the ‘T’ that makes for an ownable distinction. Perhaps unusual, and therefore memorable for a skincare brand, is the yellow and green colour palette, which exists as a reference to the ever-present lemon rind within East 29th’s formulations.