The Edit: five new projects including Northern Escape by Toohey Creative

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.

Northern Escape is a collection of privately-owned lodges located in Queensland, Australia. Available to hire, each accommodation offers unbridled access to the region’s reefs, rainforests and outback alongside the comforts of fine-dining menus and extensive international wine cellars. The experiences are further elevated by a fleet of private land, sea and aircraft, which allow residents to travel between properties and explore the surrounding natural environment seamlessly. Toohey Creative, the Sydney-based design practice of creative director Alex Toohey, was employed to create an understated identity for Northern Escape. Inspired by the brand name and the northeastern location of the lodges, he developed a system based on the north and east cardinal directions. Intentionally minimal to allow the experiences to shine, the identity is applied online, on corporate stationery and across the company’s private collection of vehicles.

Fellow Creatures creates a variety of dairy-free chocolate products from their factory in Edinburgh, Scotland. Since realising there is a real lack of options in the free-from aisles, they’ve been on a mission to prove that creamy milk chocolate can be made without the exploitation of cows. Hungarian studio Classmate designed Fellow Creatures’ jovial, maximalist identity and packaging to convey the brand’s bold objective. Through a collaboration with Lithuanian artist Egle Zvirblyte, they introduced a quirky character for each flavour, ranging from cats and dogs to hybrids of the two. Fellow serif, a custom typeface created especially for the logotype, comes together with the flowing forms of Out of Dark’s Blitz and Grilli Type’s geometric sans Walsheim to complete the wackiness.

SERPENTYN is an Emirati security organisation that helps companies fight the most sophisticated cyber threats and runs government-funded training programmes to educate on topics such as safe online practices. Melbourne-based design firm Ryan Romanes Studio, employed to create an intelligent identity system for SERPENTYN, chose to reference the multiple meanings behind the name. The first, the most traditional definition of ‘serpentine’: “of or like a serpent or snake coil”, is represented by a graphic device that smoothly weaves across each canvas. The other is the serpentine rock, which is incorporated through a sophisticated dark green hue. At the centre of the identity is the bespoke logotype, which in its purest form, is widely-tracked to mirror the long, thin proportions of a snake. However, its monospaced composition allows it to move around and form hundreds of combinations. While the ophidian form inspired the majority of the brand elements, several subtler references, such as the typographic style of computer code and the colours of the Emirati flag, are weaved in to complete a multi-faceted identity system.

VELO 22 is a bar in Kraków, Poland that serves drinks and comfort food while proposing the mantra ‘#DareToBeYourself’ to its customers. Radość Agency, who was commissioned to develop the bar’s identity, reveals that they found inspiration in the bistros of Paris and New York. A series of cheerful illustrations capture the spirit of those establishments, which the agency decided to create after discovering that ‘velo’ is the french word for bicycle. The serif used for the logotype is Jan Estrada-Osmycki’s Volcano Display, chosen by Radość for being both classic and “a little bit quirky”. When asked why purple was selected as the primary brand colour, they simply and jovially conclude that “purple is the black :)”

Gathered Connections is a self-initiated book series by Melbourne-based graphic designer Henry Ro. Each edition will showcase documentary-style photography from his trips around the world, with the first capturing his time in Japan between 2016 and 2017. His images are characterised by analytical psychologist Carl Jung’s concept of synchronicity, which defines events as ‘meaningful coincidences’. Ro adds “in my personal life I’ve always been fascinated by how life and nature can be methodical. It’s this strange notion of how everything unconsciously fits in place”. The book itself is covered in Buckram Oxford Dark Green, typeset in Colophon Foundry’s DM Sans, limited to a print run of 50 and shot entirely on a Canon 5D MII.