Ingenious Design

We all know how product packaging influences our buying decisions. In the same way, your brand identity can be seen as the ‘packaging’ of your company, conveying important messages about your values and purpose and impacting your audience’s behaviour.

Great design and a carefully constructed and consistent visual identity can create a competitive edge and set even a small business apart from a major brand.

Explore how Ingenious Design can help your organisation stand out www.ingeniousdesign.co.uk

The wait is over! The FIFA World Cup 2026 runs from 11 June to 19 July. However, the World Cup doesn’t just start when the whistle is blown- it begins with the artwork, logos and branding that encapsulate and define the event, which will be seen by millions across the world.

For the first time, the tournament is being held across three countries - Canada, Mexico and the USA. Traditionally, the event is designed around the hosting country’s culture, but this year’s World Cup’s artistic direction needed to capture the wide range of distinct cultures and histories of sixteen host cities across these three countries, while also providing a cohesive design – a massive creative challenge!

Ingenious decided to take a look at some of the key design elements:

Logo - for the first time in tournament history, the emblem realistically depicts the actual World Cup Trophy layered over the year "26” which acts as a blank canvas, adopting distinct local colour schemes and custom patterns for each of the host cities.

Poster - co-created by three artists from each country, the official poster is a collage-style composition which centres on a player silhouette crafted from country outlines, reflecting the tournament’s collective unity. FIFA also hired local artists in each city to create specific posters that capture the city’s personality using famous skylines, landmarks, Indigenous art and animals.

Ball - named "TRIONDA" (meaning "three waves"), the official match ball features a vibrant red, green, and blue colour scheme to honour the host nations. It incorporates iconography representing the three countries - maple leaf for Canada, eagle for Mexico, and star for the United States - alongside gold embellishments.

The overarching "WE ARE 26" campaign aims to make the brand feel inclusive and highly localised, breaking away from the traditional motifs of previous host countries. By allowing host cities to alter the background palette and patterns of the core logo, FIFA has created a design system that feels less centralised and more connected to the diverse communities hosting the expanded 48-team tournament.

There’s a great exhibition in Newhaven’s BN9 Studio at the Marine Workshops showcasing UK graphic art through five decades of screenprinting history from the Harvey Lloyd Screens archive. 50 Years of Print brings together leading contemporary figures including Anthony Burrill, Mr Doodle, Orla Kiely, Supermundane and Mr Bingo, alongside emerging artists and new talent.

Based in Wadhurst, East Sussex, Harvey Lloyd Screens began life in 1976 producing point-of-sale graphics, signage and commercial print for agencies and the high street. Nearly fifty years later, the studio has become one of the UK’s most respected specialist screen printers, known for its collaborative approach, technical expertise and enduring connection to contemporary British graphic art.

It's a fascinating, fun and colourful show which includes some of the most distinctive work in contemporary print, illustration and design. Free, on until 27 June and absolutely well worth a visit!

Find out more here https://www.lookagainnewhaven.co.uk/fifty-years-of-print

Ingenious loves the new branding for London’s Young Vic. Founded in 1970, the world-renowned theatre has made a name for itself by staging cutting-edge productions and reimagined classics. Working with creative agency venturethree, a new brand positioning and identity has been created in close collaboration with the theatre’s artistic director, Nadia Fall, and her leadership team.

“The Young Vic isn’t about safe or expected theatre,” explains Sarah McGuigan, strategy director at venturethree. “It’s about work that challenges people, that confronts them with new perspectives, and invites them to see the world differently.”

The Young Vic’s new brand is all about breaking down barriers and connecting people. This is seen most clearly in the new logo, which consists of a distorted wordmark, featuring motion blur at the edges to imply that it’s getting closer. Used across a range of assets, the logo cleverly hints at the theatre’s wider messaging.

And what we like best is that this new symbol of the theatre can also be seen in actual motion, where it is subtly animated to give the effect of a shift in perspective. Simple yet effective, this design builds naturally from the static version.

See the animated logo and read more here https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/venturethree-young-vic-graphic-design-project-280526

How do you design youth? The Young Vic’s new logo uses motion blur to flip dated theatre branding The Young Vic is at the cutting edge of modern theatre. Now, the world-renowned institution is flying into the future with it’s recent visual overhaul from venturethree.

It’s Volunteers Week and Ingenious is proud to give a big shout out to our designer, Kirsty Guy and her family, who have been part of the RNLI for four generations!

Kirsty’s husband, Dan (who she met when she was volunteering herself) has been with Eastbourne RNLI for almost 30 years and Dan’s dad and grandad were both crew, along with his brother. And now Kirsty and Dan’s daughter, Ellie, is following the family tradition and has just joined to begin her training.

Dan and Ellie have recently been featured in a fundraising article for the RNLI by Helly Hansen, the globally renowned Norwegian brand that manufactures and retails professional-grade sailing, outdoor, ski and workwear apparel and official supplier of the famous yellow RNLI kit.

Take a look here https://www.hellyhansen.com/en_gb/journal/rnli-mayday-fundraising-partnership?promo_name=ss26_learnrnlieu&promo_id=01052026&promo_creative=learnrnlieu&promo_position=1b

It’s never too late to donate to the RNLI and the amazing work they do to save lives at sea – see the link at the end of the article or visit the RNLI website www.rnli.org.

Photo of Dan and Ellie by Dave Riley

Our Ingenious office manager, Caroline, visited Women in Print: 150 Years of Liberty Textiles at the weekend, showing at the William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow. Presented in partnership with Liberty Fabrics on the occasion of the design house’s 150th anniversary, the exhibition traces the company’s rich history, highlighting the pivotal role and contributions of women textile designers.

Bringing together iconic patterns by designers such as Althea McNish, Susan Collier, Sarah Campbell and Lucienne Day, alongside previously overlooked names, Women in Print celebrates how women have been — and continue to be — at the heart of Liberty’s creative innovations and ongoing relevance today. It features over 100 works, spanning garments, fabric, original designs, film and historic photographs.

The exhibition is a colourful, affirmative and fascinating look at the evolving influence and status of women in textiles over the past 150 years. Well worth a visit, it’s on until 21 June.

It’s been a while since we did one of our Creative Round-ups where the Ingenious Design team likes to share an eclectic selection of recent design and branding news that has caught our eye. Happy to say we’ve just uploaded our latest compilation to the Ingenious website. Here’s a taster…

Adidas retro logo returns for World Cup

The FIFA World Cup 2026 starts soon, kicking off on 11 June and Adidas is bringing back its iconic trefoil logo on the away jerseys of 25 countries, including Japan, Mexico and Ukraine. The vintage Adidas logo shows three leaf-shaped foils with three parallel horizontal lines cutting through the shapes. Introduced in the 1970s, it previously appeared on Adidas World Cup kits until it was replaced by the brand’s triangular three-bars logo in the 1990s.

The kits pay homage to each respective country with local references, like florals representing local plants for Costa Rica and Chile, and a pattern inspired by artist René Magritte for Belgium. The revived Adidas logo instantly gives the kits a classic feel.

By bringing the old logo to one of the biggest global stages in sport, Adidas shows how to use two logos at once, keeping the three-bar performance logo as its main mark while the retro trefoil appears on its Originals brand of casual sportswear and in nostalgic marketing campaigns.

Read the full article here https://www.ingeniousdesign.co.uk/resources/creative-round-up-may-2026/

Ingenious is proud to have supported the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF) for many years with design work on a wide variety of projects, the latest of which was an urgent request for three documents which needed preparing on a limited budget and at short notice in time for an event.

Entitled Beyond Ultra-Processed Foods – A Review of Evidence-Based Interventions for the UK Food Environment, BNF required a 106-page main report, 26-page summary report and a 6-page document containing key messages. Predominantly text documents to be made available digitally only, they required simple design work using BNF branding to make them look consistent and professional, with turnaround being key.

We always do our best to deliver within budget and meet clients’ deadlines and this project was no exception. The three matching reports were prepared on time and on budget, consistent, clear and professional, exactly as requested.

Every so often, we like to highlight a particular area of our expertise and here the focus is on annual reports. Ingenious is highly skilled at designing informative, stylish and professional reports for a wide range of clients including British Nutrition Foundation, the International Tennis Federation (ITF), World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) and Ramblers.

We’ve just added some more info on this to our website – take a look here https://www.ingeniousdesign.co.uk/resources/experts-in-annual-reports/ and if you need an annual report that’s a cut above the rest, then don’t hesitate to get in touch!