In nearly every presentation and leadership piece I write, I bang on about the same thing: the best brand work does more than look good. It works hard. It delivers results. If you are really lucky, it inspires people too.
Two projects nailed that for me last year: Bugg and Sara Lee.
I choose them to make a point. One is a small New Zealand gardening brand building a cult from the ground up. The other is a dessert icon fighting its way back into hearts, trolleys and freezers. Together they show how smart design can scale from niche subculture to national staple.
Agencies that live on brand strategy and design usually lean one way. You either earn most of your revenue from the big girls (see what I did there?) – the ASX listed and multinationals, with all the stakeholder traffic and strategic rigour that comes with them, often producing work that is less “sexy”, especially in the Australian market. Or you are the studio racking up purist design awards for work every grad wants in their folio. It is not that black and white, but you get the idea.
I think it is fair to compare work that carries high complexity (too many stakeholders, over-researched, hard to implement) with work created for smaller clients and non-mainstream audiences. Both contribute real value to our industry.
Bugg, by NZ agency Seachange, is a love letter to people who treat the garden as their second home. It is clever, restrained and completely obsessed with its audience.
What makes it so impressive:
A beautiful idea: “Premium products for people who live in the garden.” Not weekend dabblers. The truly plant-obsessed, design-literate types.
A name with a wink: “Bugg” nods to insects and the slightly “buggy” passion of hobbyists without slipping into novelty.
Typographic character: The mirrored “gg” becomes an ownable little creature, part beetle and part sprouting seedling – distinctive, clever and beautifully crafted.
Rooted colour story: Soil, bark and moss tones instead of generic “eco green”, with vibrant accents used sparingly so it still feels contemporary.
A tight design language: Nibbled swing tags, ant trails on tape, copy like “For people who own more secateurs than shoes.” This is where buyers turn into fans.
This is small-brand identity done right: tight, memorable and scalable, without losing its sense of humour or its dirt-under-the-fingernails authenticity. The case study images are so well composed they had me at page one.
Where Bugg starts fresh, Sara Lee starts with the kind of legacy baggage I know too well: decades of memories, inconsistency and the weight of being “what’s always been in the freezer”.
Disegno’s work does not chase clever for the sake of it. It strips away visual noise and gives Sara Lee permission to be proud of itself again. It is one of those projects that sparks a little professional jealousy, much like when I first saw the Kellogg’s global masterbrand work by Landor in 2019. Sigh.
Key moves:
Reclaiming the core idea: “Tastes like home” becomes the organising principle for design, communications and photography.
Doubling down on red: Instead of diluting the strongest asset, the new identity puts red back in charge so it wins attention in a noisy freezer.
Simple sensory moments: Less food-styling theatre, more believable “serve it to your family” scenes – melting, sliced, shared.
Cleaner hierarchy: A stronger, prouder wordmark, clearer range navigation and less pack clutter so frozen-dessert shoppers can spot favourites in seconds and, importantly, discover new ones.
System, not skin: The work stretches from identity into portfolio architecture and storytelling, creating a framework that can move into new formats and categories.
This is big-brand design with discipline, protecting hard-earned memory structures while stripping away the filler that stopped people seeing the brand they already loved. I know how tough it is to get this kind of project approved with the purity of the original idea intact.
Across Bugg and Sara Lee, a few truths cut through for me as a designer and agency owner:
Start with a real human truth and build from there.
Use design to amplify what is already distinctive instead of chasing novelty.
Build systems that flex across products, channels and years.
Let craft and restraint do the heavy lifting; premium does not have to mean over-designed.
Small brand or large commercial, the brief is the same: make it easier for people to recognise you, choose you and feel something when they do. Bugg and Sara Lee prove that when identity is done well, it does not just decorate a product; it builds value, loyalty and longevity.
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This article was originally written as part of Transform Magazines rebrand of the year: 2025
