Is minimalism doing this label a favor, or losing what made it charming? 🤔

Found this while flipping through a Japanese book of vintage canned food labels and decided to give one a rework. Same ham, completely different shelf presence.

Vintage approach: hand painted illustration, full color, a lot happening at once.

Modern approach: vectorial line work, no color, one pattern and narrow type system holding the whole label together.

I need to know, if these two were sitting next to each other in a store, which one would you actually reach for?

I prefer the Vintage Approach. Sort of related: When I was reading your description for the Modern Approach and you wrote "...no color...", I suddenly remembered an article I read some time ago that talked about "how the world has gradually been losing its color" especially in...

When it was time to work on the branding for Trackii, a personal finance app for multi income earners, I didn't want just any brand identity. Here's why.

One of Trackii's core messages is financial clarity. Making money is hard and boring. Saving money? Even harder. So I knew the brand had to do more than make sense, it had to be interesting. Not easy... interesting. Managing your money is a lifestyle. Watching your money grow? Big lifestyle (cos tbh, if your money finish, you dey on your own o).

That thinking shaped every decision: the colors, the image style, the font, the logo. Trackii needed to work as a whole, icon and wordmark, one system, not separate pieces bolted together. And I wasn't chasing the generic "agentic AI" look everyone's defaulting to. This was built for humans, by humans... (with humans, in case you were wondering).

I really like the use of color! It has character but is refreshing at the same time.