What the studio is reading.
Daily, curated. 5 to 7 items a day across design, branding, packaging, consumer trends, technology, and India. Every link goes to the source.
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Elizabeth Goodspeed’s Branding for Leaven Rises to the Top
Elizabeth Goodspeed's branding for Leaven shows how a bakery identity can carry genuine typographic ambition without tipping into precious, a balance most food brands never find.
Read on Dieline -
By Fearing Wokeness, Marketers Are Hitting the Snooze Button on Growth
Adweek argues that marketers retreating from cultural risk are not playing it safe, they are quietly ceding growth to brands willing to stand for something.
Read on Adweek -
Rude Olive Packs a Pun in Every Tin
Rude Olive proves that a single well-placed pun, executed with restraint across packaging, can do more brand-building work than a full campaign deck ever could.
Read on Dieline -
Cocola Gâteaux Turns a Mispronunciation Into a Whole Brand
Cocola Gâteaux built an entire brand identity around a customer mispronunciation, which is a sharper brief than most agencies get handed in a year.
Read on Dieline -
BWS 2026: Marketers shift focus from reach to attention in the AI era
At BWS 2026, Indian marketers are moving budgets from reach metrics toward attention metrics, a quiet but consequential rewrite of how ROI gets measured in the AI era.
Read on Brand Equity (Economic Times) -
Marketing Matters: IKEA builds itself as a cultural brand in India
IKEA India is not just selling flat-pack furniture anymore, it is building cultural relevance through local rituals, and that shift in strategy is worth studying closely.
Read on Brand Equity (Economic Times) -
Why Curie Redesigned Its Brand After Breaking Into Walmart
Curie rebuilt its brand *after* landing Walmart shelf space — a rare case of a founder treating retail distribution as the starting line for identity work, not the finish.
Read on Adweek -
light’s nostalgic flip phone is ‘designed to be used as little as possible’
Light's new flip phone is engineered to be used as little as possible — a product brief so counter to every growth metric in tech that it almost functions as a brand manifesto.
Read on Designboom -
Has Redesign Hate Gone Too Far?
Dieline asks whether the internet's reflexive hatred of every rebrand has become its own kind of noise — worth reading if you've ever had to defend a client's new logo to Twitter.
Read on Dieline -
Joy to the Wine World: Hey Studio Designs a Label You Can Draw On
Hey Studio designed a wine label you can draw on — simple constraint, strong idea, and a reminder that the best packaging brief is sometimes just one sentence.
Read on Dieline -
American Eagle Shook Up Its Back-to-School Playbook to Reach a Fragmented Gen Z
American Eagle scrapped its standard back-to-school playbook to reach a Gen Z audience that no longer congregates anywhere long enough to be targeted the old way.
Read on Adweek -
The Great AI Content Grab
Brand Equity's 'Great AI Content Grab' examines who actually owns the training data powering Indian media — a question every agency building AI tools should have a position on.
Read on Brand Equity (Economic Times) -
Can Dialogue Beat Scale?
Brand Equity asks whether genuine dialogue — slower, messier, harder to scale — can outperform broadcast reach for Indian brands chasing loyalty over impressions.
Read on Brand Equity (Economic Times) -
Thirst’s Beer Range for Marks & Spencer Is Private Label at Its Best
Thirst's beer range for Marks & Spencer shows private label doesn't have to mean forgettable — this is what happens when a retailer briefs for craft and actually means it.
Read on Dieline -
Mexican Ketchup Brand Paco Jones Delivers ‘Two Cultures, One Squeeze’
Paco Jones, a Mexican ketchup brand, fuses two cultures into one bottle — a masterclass in how immigrant identity can become a brand's sharpest competitive edge.
Read on Dieline -
How Jen Zeszut Built Goodles by Out-Weirding Industry Giants
Jen Zeszut built Goodles into a real challenger brand by leaning into weirdness — proof that out-weirding category giants is a legitimate go-to-market strategy, not a risk.
Read on Adweek -
AMF’s Retro Rebrand Aims to Win Over Gen Z Without Losing the League Crowd
AMF's retro rebrand targets Gen Z without alienating its league loyalists — the brief every legacy brand fears, and a rare case of someone actually threading that needle.
Read on Adweek -
A for Amazon: How Gen Alpha is Redefining the Alphabet
Gen Alpha is growing up with Amazon as the letter A — Brand Equity unpacks what it means when a brand colonises something as foundational as the alphabet.
Read on Brand Equity (Economic Times) -
The rise of unexpected brand mashups
Unexpected brand mashups are gaining ground in India — Brand Equity maps why co-branding is moving from novelty stunt to a serious tool for audience expansion.
Read on Brand Equity (Economic Times) -
BWS 2026: Legacy brands must reinvent without losing their core, says Geetika Mehta
Geetika Mehta at BWS 2026 puts it plainly: legacy brands that reinvent by abandoning their core don't survive — the tension between relevance and identity is the real strategic problem.
Read on Brand Equity (Economic Times) -
The Key to Building More Durable Brand Relationships
Adweek makes the case that brand durability comes from consistency under pressure — a useful frame for any founder deciding whether to chase trends or hold the line.
Read on Adweek -
Coca-Cola Unveils Newly Refreshed Global Visual Identity System
Coca-Cola's first global visual identity refresh in years is worth studying closely — not for the nostalgia, but for how a brand this large moves without losing coherence.
Read on Dieline -
Tracksuit Acquires AI Brand-Monitoring Startup Hall
Tracksuit acquiring AI brand-monitoring startup Hall signals that real-time brand health tracking is becoming infrastructure — not a luxury reserved for enterprise marketing teams.
Read on Adweek -
How Soft Geometry's work reflects its founders' Indian legacy
Soft Geometry's founders built a New York design practice rooted in Indian craft traditions — a rare example of heritage used as a creative edge, not a marketing footnote.
Read on Wallpaper* -
Why the Outside of the Box Matters More Than You Think
Dieline argues the exterior of packaging does more commercial work than the product inside — and the data behind that claim should change how you brief your next box.
Read on Dieline -
Creator Influence and the Politics of Trust
Brand Equity unpacks why creator trust is fracturing in India — audiences are getting sharper at spotting paid influence, and brands that ignore this are burning credibility fast.
Read on Brand Equity (Economic Times) -
Premiumisation, media fragmentation and AI to redefine FMCG marketing: Nitin Saini
Nitin Saini's read on Indian FMCG is blunt: premiumisation, media fragmentation, and AI aren't coming — they're already restructuring where and how brands win shelf and mind space.
Read on Brand Equity (Economic Times) -
A perfect pair of Range Rovers, old and new, showcases a commitment to bespoke design
Range Rover put a classic and its 2024 successor side by side — the visual contrast is a masterclass in how a brand can evolve a design language without losing its original logic.
Read on Wallpaper* -
circular roof opening brings sunlight into casa óculo by OHLAB in palma
OHLAB cut a circular oculus into the roof of a Palma residence, and the resulting light well does more for spatial identity than any interior finish could — restraint as a design decision.
Read on Designboom -
Remembering Teruo Kurosaki, a creative entrepreneur who embodied Japan in the 1980s
Teruo Kurosaki built Idée into a cultural force in 1980s Japan by treating retail as editorial — worth understanding if you think brand-building is just a logo and a color palette.
Read on Wallpaper*
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