Wolff Olins

A moment for matcha... 🍵 Once a specialist tea tied to slow, meditative rituals, matcha is now a lifestyle tell – instantly recognisable and quietly expressive of taste and wellbeing. Global Executive Creative Director Emma Barratt and Senior Designer Jun Ki Hong spoke with Creative Review about this shift and what it meant as part of the Blank Street rebrand work. Read the full story. 👉 https://lnkd.in/enZipwTf #matcha #creativereview #branding #design

What should a homebuilder’s brand feel like? Home. 🏡 Since its family beginnings in 1946, Bellway Homes has always focused on one thing: building high-quality homes inspired by the needs of real families. Decades on – and hundreds of thousands of homes later – that commitment to care, optimism and accessibility remains unchanged. Our challenge was to evolve this legacy for a new generation and to transform how people experience the Bellway brand at every touchpoint. So we built a refreshed brand around the single idea: “feels like home”. And every design decision flows from there. The visual and verbal identity draws on the warm light of British homes and is balanced by a new logo and bespoke typeface that’s modern and timeless, whilst conveying subtle authority. Bellway today is a brand that's more unified, distinctive and built to scale. One that speaks to every customer and makes the road to a new home feel clearer and more intuitive – from the first online search to that first step through the door. #rebrand #brandidentity #design #brandtransformation

100 curious leaders. One of them is ours. 💥 Eames Institute’s Curious 100 honours people using curiosity to tackle complex social challenges and shape the cultural conversations of our time. This year, that includes our own Global Design & AI Resident Forest Young – recognised in the Explorer category for venturing beyond boundaries through experimentation and risk-taking in pursuit of progress. Sounds about right… See the full 2026 Curious 100 list. 👉https://lnkd.in/ercyiMA5 #curious100 #design #creativity

Lil' Finder Guy: the next Clippy – or something better? Mascots can often be viewed as gimmicks. But when they're designed with purpose as part of the brand experience, they can become a meaningful asset. Especially in newer categories like tech and crypto, seen in the likes of the MetaMask fox which celebrates milestones, signals security and welcomes newcomers into the world of web3. Global Principal Amanda Munilla explores the buzz behind Apple’s new brand mascot and their role in a brand’s toolkit for Muse by Clios. 👉 https://lnkd.in/e4j5SXRY #mascots #apple #design #brandtransformation The Clios

Curiosity filled the studio this week – just how we like it. 💛 We opened our London studio to two brilliant cohorts: Graphic Design students from London College of Communication, University of the Arts London and Economics & Business students all the way from the Utah State University. On Monday, the LCC students went behind the scenes with our design team – seeing how raw ideas get shaped, sharpened and pushed until they land. Later in the week, 25 Utah State University students dropped in as part of their UK tour, meeting our strategy team for a crash course in branding that ended with a real‑world brief to test their thinking. Huge thanks to both groups for bringing the energy – and to Finn O'Brien, Jamilya Kulambayeva, Daniel Stettler, Milan Kendall Shah and Manlio Minale for leading the sessions! #students #graphicdesign #brandstrategy #brandtransformation

Hypergrowth is exciting. Hypergrowth is messy. Sometimes both at once. Take Uber. By 2017, it had expanded into 600+ cities, moving beyond rides into food and freight. But that relentless ambition was starting to pull the business apart. With a new CEO and IPO on the horizon, the question shifted from “how fast can we grow?” to “how do we build a business to last?” Three lessons on brand architecture emerged: ⚡ Turn expansion into a single idea: Moving at pace creates sprawl. Architecture connects disparate offers into one coherent story, so growth feels intentional, not accidental. For Uber, the connecting idea was a mobility ecosystem designed to go anywhere and get anything. ⚡ Turn complexity into clarity: As ecosystems expand, users see clutter. Architecture makes it easier to navigate, understand, and trust. We simplified Uber’s business into a clear ‘Go / Get’ story, making the logic and design clear across every interaction. ⚡ Give teams a clear path to grow: Hypergrowth often slows decision-making. Architecture helps to guide internal focus and speed up decisions. Our approach created clear guidance on where Uber should and shouldn’t play, helping teams move faster in the right direction. The impact remains. Early Uber investor Bill Gurley, described the update in the Financial Times as: “putting out all those fires, getting the brand moving in the right direction again. It’s night and day.” Explore our work with Uber. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/e486U-UB #hypergrowth #brandstrategy #brandtransformation

What does it mean to do right by nature? 🌸 For New York Botanical Garden, it means everything – studying it, protecting it, learning from it or simply enjoying it. We spent three seasons at the Garden, building a refreshed brand system around that one idea – balancing Bronx boldness with organic lushness, designed to feel fresh year-round. Custom typography drawn from natural forms. A palette pulled from trees, fungi, and the Bronx River. Photography that sees the world from nature’s perspective. Thanks for the feature Graphis Inc.! Read the full story here. 👉 https://lnkd.in/ePE2Jjxw #graphisawards #design #nybg #branding

Adding a spark to the coffee run. ☕️✨ Blank Street began as a single cart in Williamsburg in 2020, serving small moments of connection when the world needed them most. A few years later, with dozens of locations and a devoted following, the brand had outgrown its challenger beginnings. The inflection point was clear: evolve from startup challenger to generational cultural icon. Our insight was simple but potent: life happens in the everyday moments. The coffee before a meeting, the afternoon reset…those tiny rituals that punctuate the day. The idea “Regularly remarkable” became the creative north star. It reflects the tension that makes Blank Street interesting. It’s high and low. AM and PM. Classics and specials. That routine thing you do every day but somehow makes the day a little extra. We created a visual and verbal identity that plays on those dualities, those tensions; influencing everything from the colour palette to the typography to the art direction. Blank Street isn’t just a place to grab coffee. It’s the brand that makes the daily coffee run feel like something worth posting about. And it really is, with user-generated posts on social media up 80% YoY post-launch. Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/egcKKuFs #rebrand #brandidentity #design #brandtransformation

Impact and influence, in focus. 🌟 Global CEO Sairah Ashman has joined the jury for the Management Today Women in Leadership Power List 2026, to celebrate women who are steering strategy, driving transformation and making a tangible difference in modern business. In her own words: “It’s a privilege to be part of the process this year, and really take a moment to spotlight those leading by example. Here's to the stimulating and surprising conversations ahead.” More on the awards via the link in comments. 👇 #womeninleadershippowerlist #managementtoday #leadership

How do you turn a complex, global issue like water access into something people can quickly grasp? Creative Director Scott Cress chats to Design Observer about shaping the Get Blue brand – Water.org’s new initiative to bring safe water and sanitation to millions. “The biggest challenge to get people involved is really overcoming that feeling of powerlessness. The unlock for our team then was solvability – Water.org’s approach has the potential to actually tackle this crisis in a way that few can.” 🔍 Read the full interview here: https://lnkd.in/e7gd9_4D #branding #design #brand