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SheetBrand and packaging

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Left outAgency work on other people's brands

Brand and packaging · 2016 to now

Labels, boxes and a stand at the NEC.

Six years as the only designer at NOVAVAPES, then the clients who came to my studio for a brand before they wanted a website. Print is where I learned the rule I still build by: once it's at the press, you don't get to take it back.

NOVAVAPES · in-house · 2016 to 2022

Every bottle and every pouch, for six years.

I was the only designer from startup to established brand, so every range on the shelf was mine to draw: NovaJuice, Rose and Ivy, ICE and the specials around them. A label has to carry the warnings the law puts on a nicotine product and still sell the flavour from across a shop.

  • Seven NovaJuice bottles in a row, each label a different colour with dripping script lettering.

    NovaJuice, the core range

    One template, a colour and a drip for each flavour, so the range reads as a family on a shelf and a flavour up close.

  • A black Rose and Ivy pouch with an ornate gold label, between bottles from the range.

    Rose and Ivy

    The dessert range, dressed as an old sweet shop. Pouch and bottles.

  • A flat label proof in rust red with a gold Victorian frame, the Rose and Ivy and NovaVapes marks, and small regulatory text.

    A Rose and Ivy label at proof

    Bakewell Slice, flat, with the batch and strength panels and the regulatory text in place.

  • A black OG ICE pouch with a cosmic circular label, between pale blue ICE bottles.

    OG ICE

    The menthol range, pouch and bottles.

  • A purple label with Blueberry Milk in white script, dripping purple at the top, with the bottle size and strength in the corners.

    Blueberry Milk

    A shortfill label from the NovaJuice range, laid flat.

  • A bottle of The Pink One ICE bursting out of raspberries, lime and ice on a blue ground.

    The Pink One ICE

    A launch post. The bottle is the product shot, and the fruit and ice are the flavour.

The Vaper Expo · NEC Birmingham · October 2018

Redrawn overnight, from 4:50pm to 3am.

Stand D745 was NOVAVAPES' first stand at a national trade show, and we'd paid a stand design agency to design it. They had three months. The MD and I phoned every two weeks for progress and never saw any. At 4:50pm the night before it went to print, they sent us what they said was exactly how our stand would look, going to the printer at 9:30 the next morning. An hour later I was redrawing it, with the MD on a video call giving his feedback as I went. We finished at 3am, and the full print files were in by opening time. In one night I out-designed an agency that had three months.

  • Flat artwork for every panel of an exhibition stand: black and white walls, blue and orange diagonal stripes, a gold price panel, and Rose and Ivy, NovaJuice and ICE marks on the back wall.

    What the agency sent

    Not mine, and shown here for the comparison. Black walls, orange and blue stripes and a gold price panel: nothing in it looked like the labels people already knew us by, and this was what three months had come to. Printed, it would have made us look amateur at our first national show.

  • Flat artwork for the same stand redrawn as one deep purple night sky with planets and a pink horizon, the ranges on the back wall, Why pay more for premium on the header and #TEAMNOVA on the counter.

    What we printed

    The brand was built to be loud on a shop shelf, so the stand had to be too. One night sky runs across every panel so it reads as one thing from the aisle, with the three ranges on the back wall, #TEAMNOVA on the counter and the price at eye height. For all three days people told us how well it fit the brand, and it outshone stands from businesses worth millions. That weekend NOVAVAPES won 2,500 new customers and orders, and over £15,000 in revenue from products that sold at £5 each.

Atelier 93 · a perfume house · 2022

A perfume house, from the mark to the box.

The whole identity for a fragrance brand whose manifesto was "don't overcomplicate or overcharge for the everyday": the marks, the guidelines that say how to use them, a box for each scent and the posts that launched them.

  • The cover of the Atelier 93 brand guidelines: the mark in yellow and green over four landscape photographs, from sunrise to desert.

    The brand guidelines

    Thirteen pages: the manifesto, the four marks, three typefaces, and a colour pair for each of the six scents with the Pantone, CMYK and hex for every one.

  • A guidelines page showing the Atelier 93 logo four ways: full, the O mark alone, an A with 93, and the word Atelier.

    Four marks, one system

    Full, mark, mini and text, each in colour and in black and white.

  • A clear perfume bottle labelled Atelier Riptide in front of its box, which wraps a photograph of a breaking wave around a large green O.

    Riptide

    Bottle and box for the first scent.

  • A tall perfume box covered in pink and teal palm trees, with Summer Daze in pink and yellow on a white band.

    Summer Daze

    Each scent has its own colours, and on its box the mark takes them on.

  • A tall white perfume box with a sunset arch in orange, pink and blue and the word Dusk in purple.

    Dusk

    The same frame again, with a sunset where the palms were.

  • Bold white condensed type reading A bold modern perfume house, with the word bold in yellow, over dark leaves and the green O.

    The launch

    A post for the launch, set in the brand's display face.

Identities and lettering · DesignBuddy · 2017 to now

Logos, lettering and the odd burger stamp.

Most of my studio's clients came for a mark before they came for a website. Some went on to be built, some stayed as identities, and one was a set of options for a restaurant that wanted its name on aprons and on the burgers.

  • The word KOMORU in tall, sharp classic metal lettering with an upside-down cross dropping from the middle of the M, shown in black and in dark red.

    KOMORU

    A local death metal band who didn't want the usual spiderweb death metal logo. They wanted a classic metal band mark, closer to Party Cannon's, so I drew one with an upside-down cross hanging from the M. The band leader called it "horrifically cheesy and on the nose, but it really kinda works, doesn't it?"

  • The Signalfire logo: a green flame whose base becomes wifi waves, above the name in white on deep purple.

    Signalfire

    A flame that is also a signal, in one gradient.

  • The Among logo: a rounded speech bubble built from layered bands of deep blue, teal and green, above the word among in heavy black lowercase.

    Among

    The identity for an SMS job search startup in Denver. The founder loved hiking and the outdoors, so the mark is a speech bubble layered in greens like a contour map, which also nods to the steep terrain the city is known for.

  • Two business cards, a tablet and a phone on a sage green ground, each showing the green layered Among speech bubble.

    Among, on cards and screens

    The final mark on business cards, a tablet and a phone, where it has to work as an app icon too.

  • Lettermark development for Lost Monster Co.: a heavy lowercase m with a creature's head, the name beneath, and four variations of the m.

    Lost Monster

    A development sheet: the L and M combined into one monster-shaped letter, with the variations I'd push next.

  • A square hanging sign on a stone building, showing a faceted black M with Mirage spaced out beneath it.

    Mirage

    A geometric M, mocked up on the sign it was drawn for.

  • The Wasp Leisure logo in yellow and white: a stylised wasp inside a hexagon, shown with and without the name.

    Wasp Leisure

    A wasp in a hexagon, with a version for every size it has to work at.

  • A fanned stack of white business cards with the Lombok Farm Microgreens logo in green and purple.

    Lombok Farm

    Business cards for a microgreens grower.

  • A hand holding a green reusable cup printed with the Book Nook logo.

    Book Nook

    The mark on the thing people would actually hold.

  • A pink and white patterned mailer box, shown closed and open, on a dark page from a brand proposal.

    Dripp

    Brand and packaging, from the proposal: the mark repeated into a pattern for the box.

  • A green cylindrical Envy Salt tube, the brand in white script, with the nicotine warning on a white panel.

    Envy Salt

    A nicotine salt label that had to fit the warning and still look like something.

Covers, posters and a tour shirt

Gig posters and album covers.

Bands came to me for covers and tour posters, which is the best brief there is: it has to read from the back of a room and still work at the size of a thumbnail on Bandcamp.

  • A dark tour poster with the Aphotic and Osiah logos in white and purple over a grey sea creature, the support acts below and the date 13.12.21.

    Aphotic and Osiah, UK tour

    The co-headline tour poster, for the Glasgow date at Garage Attic on 13 December 2021.

  • A man in a black T-shirt printed with the Aphotic logo in red over a grey creature.

    The tour shirt

    The same artwork, on the merch table.

  • An EP cover: the KOMORU lettering in white over a grainy black and white photograph of a burnt-out building.

    KOMORU, the EP

    The lettering from above, on a cover.

  • A cover with ISOLATIONIST spaced across a pale sky above a figure standing at the end of a long jetty.

    Isolationist, Trauma

    A single cover, mostly sky.

  • A framed poster on a desk: Be Heard in green script over an orange sun on pink, with the survey's address below.

    Be Heard

    A poster for the National Student Survey.

More on DribbbleThe rest of the work

Craig Hawkes