The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
Back to feedPost
For the past week, I've been catching up on movies that I really want to see. Yesterday I watched Memories of Murder and remembered how this medium has always influenced me.
When I was doing my bachelor's degree, one of the first tasks a professor gave us was to go watch Inglourious Basterds in theaters and dissect it from a design perspective. I believe that exercise was essential to understanding the basics of design. The use of typography, composition, color combination, framing... All of that is used meticulously, and yesterday I was reminded of that. The medium we work in isn't simply visual. It should convey a message. That graphics follow strategy, and that we should be influenced by several art forms, not simply the one we work in.
The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
Challenges
View all
Related posts
Nocturne is a self-initiated fragrance house I built from the ground up, treated with the same process I'd bring to any client: strategy first, then design.
The brief was familiar: a fragrance inspired by the city after dark. Most fragrance branding solves that with common approaches such as moonlight, mystery, or gold foil details. I wanted to solve it with something more specific: what does after dark actually look like in an urban environment? Concrete, streetlight, wet pavement, the quiet stretch between one train and the next.
That question shaped everything downstream. An archetype chosen deliberately against category convention, Creator and Explorer rather than the more expected Lover or Magician. A material-first approach to the bottle and packaging. Sandblasted glass, a textured concrete-like cap, no gold, no ornament. And a running checklist I held every decision against throughout the project.
The case study covers the strategy behind Nocturne, not just the finished system: positioning, personality, the reasoning behind each material and typography choice, and how those decisions translated into the bottle, packaging, and campaign work.
I'd love to hear what you think, especially if you enjoy seeing the thinking behind a visual identity as much as the final result.
Good Work!
Wonder -- Visual Expressions
The restraint in the warm palette really lets the sound-object concept breathe—especially that shift from readable type to atmosphere.
I’ve been slowly updating all of our project imagery across a new website update and and our internal decks.
Logos are only a small fraction of what we do for clients now, but I still love starting there. They often set the tone for the wider identity, the visual language, and the story we’re trying to tell.
Also, pretty satisfying seeing some of my favourites all together on one page.
Nice