The official South African website of the global manufacturing corporation BIC rises above and sets an example for its peer localisation sites with pristine crisp photography, pixel-perfect web layout elements, and a strong branding implementation including its typography.

BIC South Africa’s main landing page falls on a welcoming image displaying an array of pens, stationary lighters and razors, with a BIC mascot, logo, and title message set in CJ Type’s Dunbar Tall in ExtraBold style. The sleek and sharp lettershapes of Dunbar reflect the utilitarian simplicity and efficiency of BIC’s products with a hint of quirk such as the lighter buttons or the Dunbar letter e.

Dunbar is consistently applied through headings and product category landing page titles with the body paragraphs set in Julieta Ulanovsky’s Montserrat in a mix of its Medium and Regular weights. The website menus are set in Montserrat Regular and Bold styles.

Interestingly, upon entering the shopping pages, the website defaults all its fonts including the menus, headers and body text to Impallari Type’s Dosis typeface. Other localised sites of BIC default to Noto Sans, however several of these websites currently land on a “coming soon” page.

CJ Type’s founder shared that “they licensed Cyrillic in addition to Latin” and “they requested Kazakh glyphs” – possibly for future localized uses on the webpages for Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine.

The CSR pen donation initiative page uses Avenir and the handwriting font Journal in addition to the Dunbar and Montserrat brand fonts.

Shop pages maintain Dunbar in lighter weight for page title, however default to Dosis for menus, headers, buttons, and paragraphs.

Shop pages maintain Dunbar in lighter weight for page title, however default to Dosis for menus, headers, buttons, and paragraphs.

Branding from South African localized site rolled out to social media graphics

Part of series of hand-embroidered artworks created by Linny Giffin, a fiber artist and interior decorator in Washington D.C.

The artwork reimagines in thread the typeface Spindle by Gor Jihanian. The online shop, Linny Inc., uses the original version for the wordmark, with Dosis for the menu.

Naughty Alchemist is a 100% vegan, organic skincare label launched by Stella Nisreen Kanaan. The visual identity of this Danish cosmetic label features JAF Lapture, accompanied by Barlow and Dosis. In the logotype, a modified version of the lowercase g can be found: the “ear” is drop-shaped and points upwards. From a “design craft” point of view, this is wrong as Lapture does not contain any drop terminals at all, but the oddity gives it a welcome “naughty” twist.

AM Copenhagen has created not only the visual identity but also the packaging and interior design of the beautiful apothecary lab, where the skincare products are created. From their case study:

The logomark is hand-drawn by AM and references Stella as a child — in the field, collecting flowers and plants. The visual identity is focused around the mood and fascination of the nature. Naughty Alchemist is a modern and rebellious brand with a history, which in many aspects will differentiate itself in the beauty industry. The design focuses throughout the identity on the personal history and the individual natural beauty, with the result that all the elements contains small and personal natural un-perfect characteristics.