Benjamin Smith, Senior Brand Designer and Creative Developer

Mist Thermal Sanctuary brand identity - sauna and natural landscape on Bowen Island
Mist brand identity system showcasing minimalist wellness design
Mist thermal sanctuary outdoor cold plunge and fire pit experience
Mist brand collateral and packaging design for wellness products
Mist signage and wayfinding design in natural forest setting

Mist Thermal Sanctuary

Brand Identity System
Bowen Island, Canada

The Challenge

In a wellness landscape cluttered with performative self-care and Instagram-ready experiences, Mist's founders wanted to create something genuine and elemental - but struggled to articulate what made their vision distinct.

The Discovery

Through strategic conversations, we uncovered their core belief: restoration happens through simple, timeless rituals - the kind humans have practiced for millennia. Sauna. Cold plunge. Fire. Silence. The atmospheric mist that moves through BC's coastal forests became both metaphor and experience.

The Insight

Rather than trends-driven wellness aesthetics, we built a visual system around the four elements themselves - fire, water, earth, air. Each shapes both the physical experience and brand language, grounding Mist in the rituals of nature rather than the performance of self-care.

The Outcome

We developed the strategic framework, visual identity, web experience, environmental signage, packaging, and merchandise - everything aligned to elemental simplicity.

Credits

Copywriting — Mimi Young Photography — Jenna Pullen, Jeanie Ow

SRAM Force AXS New Physics campaign branding and visual system
SRAM Force AXS geometric brand identity with cycling technology focus
SRAM wireless shifting system campaign design and art direction
SRAM Force AXS technical product photography and brand materials
SRAM campaign showcasing revolutionary wireless drivetrain technology

SRAM — Force AXS

Campaign Identity
Vancouver, Canada

The Challenge

SRAM had brought revolutionary wireless electronic shifting down from pro racing to the enthusiast level - but how do you communicate what changes when friction disappears? When cables and mechanical limitations are removed, riding fundamentally transforms. Shifts happen at the speed of thought. Your position on the bars no longer dictates your gearing options. This wasn't an upgrade, it was a different framework for how bikes work.

The Discovery

Through collaboration with SRAM's product and marketing teams, we identified the core tension: the technology was invisible, but the transformation was profound. Traditional bike marketing focuses on specs and incremental improvements. Force AXS needed language that captured a paradigm shift - where the old rules, the compromises, the limitations simply no longer apply.

The Insight

New Physics. Not just wireless. Not just electronic. A fundamental rewrite of the relationship between rider and machine. The campaign needed to make this invisible revolution visible.

The Outcome

We built a campaign identity system that rejected incremental upgrade language in favor of transformation. Visual language that felt like a reset, not a refinement. Messaging that positioned Force AXS as the point where everything changes - the moment when thought becomes action without mechanical translation. Campaign strategy, visual identity, launch materials, retail systems, digital experience - everything aligned to one idea: the old physics no longer apply.

Credits

Creative Direction — Good Fortune Collective 3D Production — Studio Tendril

Mountain Joe canned cocktail brand identity showcasing Mount Rundle design
Mountain Joe packaging design inspired by Banff Rocky Mountains
Mountain Joe cocktail can design with Parks Canada-inspired branding
Mountain Joe brand identity system for Park Distillery Banff
Mountain Joe Shaft cocktail packaging and brand collateral

Mountain Joe

Brand & Packaging Design
Banff, Canada

The Challenge

Park Distillery's 'Shaft' cocktail had become a Banff legend - outselling beer on tap at their restaurant - but existed only behind the bar. The founders wanted to can it for wider distribution, but faced a fundamental branding problem: how do you bottle a local sensation without losing what made it special? The drink belonged to Banff. Could a packaged product carry that sense of place?

The Discovery

Through conversations with the Park Distillery team, we uncovered what made the Shaft more than just a cocktail - it was part of Banff's après culture. The rituals after a day on the mountain. The energy of the town at the base of Mount Rundle. Spend any time in the Rockies and you notice the repetition: Parks Canada ranger uniforms become synonymous with the region itself. The drink wasn't succeeding because of what was in it, but because of where it came from.

The Insight

Mountain Joe needed to feel like an intrinsic extension of the Rockies, not a product trying to reference them. The brand couldn't gesture toward Banff - it had to be Banff.

The Outcome

We built the entire identity from the region itself. Mount Rundle's distinctive profile became the structural foundation of the can design. The colour palette came directly from those ubiquitous Parks Canada ranger uniforms - the visual shorthand for the Rockies. The name referenced the coffee-spiked cocktail while grounding it in mountain culture rather than craft cocktail preciousness.

Credits

Creative Direction — Glasfurd & Walker Photography — Ian Lanterman & Park Distillery

Crypto Autos luxury car marketplace brand identity and visual system
Crypto Autos cryptocurrency payment platform branding for automotive
Crypto Autos brand identity merging luxury automotive with crypto technology
Crypto Autos visual system for digital car marketplace
Crypto Autos animated logo

Crypto Autos

Brand Identity System
Dubai, UAE

The Challenge

Crypto Autos was pioneering something that didn't yet have a visual language - a luxury car marketplace that accepts cryptocurrency. The problem wasn't just aesthetic, it was cultural: crypto brands feel technical and cold. Luxury automotive brands feel traditional and exclusive. How do you bridge two worlds that have completely different visual codes and speak to audiences that don't naturally overlap?

The Discovery

We saw what the founding team was building toward: a brand that could speak to a new type of customer. Not crypto-native tech enthusiasts. Not traditional luxury car collectors. A hybrid audience who'd built wealth in digital assets and wanted to spend it on physical status symbols. The brand needed to feel native to both luxury and crypto simultaneously - and their existing identity couldn't carry that weight.

The Insight

Crypto Autos exists at the intersection of luxury, lifestyle, and technology - but the brand couldn't choose one lane. It needed the flex and range to speak credibly across completely different contexts: social media and live events, web experiences and car wraps, crypto communities and automotive collectors.

The Outcome

We built an identity system with inherent versatility - confident enough for luxury positioning, dynamic enough for crypto culture, sophisticated enough for high-value transactions. A visual language that could shift between technical precision and lifestyle aspiration without losing coherence. We also developed a campaign and sub-brand for their native token, $AUTOS, which raised $4.4 million USD in 4.5 hours.

Credits

Creative Direction — Michael Hindle

Pasitha essential oils brand identity with minimalist aesthetic
Pasitha waterless diffuser packaging and product design
Pasitha brand system for lifestyle essential oils and wellness products
Pasitha typography and visual identity for nebulizer diffuser brand
Pasitha product photography showcasing clean essential oil branding

Pasitha

Brand Identity System
Vancouver, Canada

The Challenge

The essential oils market had calcified into two exhausted aesthetics: cold and medicinal, or earthy and boho. Pasitha's waterless nebulizing diffusers were genuinely different technology - no candle smoke, no toxic plumes, no mould from water-based systems - but the product innovation risked being buried under category conventions. How do you break a brand out of visual clichés when the entire category looks the same?

The Discovery

We saw what other brands missed: these aren't products you use and put away. They live in your space. On your shelf. On your nightstand. Essential oil diffusers are part of your home's aesthetic, yet the category treated them like bathroom cabinet products - covered in botanical imagery and wellness clichés, designed to be hidden.

The Insight

Pasitha needed to be positioned as a lifestyle brand, not a wellness brand. The visual language should reflect what makes the technology clean: pure essential oil diffused into fine mist. No additives. No compromise. Understated design that earns its place in considered interiors.

The Outcome

We stripped away the botanical wallpaper. Muted tones, refined typography, clean systems that let the product be the hero. The brand feels at home next to your design objects, not hidden in a cupboard with supplements.

Credits

Brassica farm-to-table restaurant brand identity Gibsons BC
Brassica illustrated vegetable characters and playful brand system
Brassica menu design with seasonal vegetables and local ingredients
Brassica restaurant signage with layered wood construction
Brassica brand identity inspired by cabbage and mustard family plants

Brassica

Brand Identity System
Gibsons, Canada

The Challenge

Farm-to-table restaurants had locked themselves into two tired positions: overly rustic (reclaimed wood, kraft paper, hand-lettered chalkboards) or clinically minimal (white plates, sans-serif, "let the food speak"). Brassica's seasonal, locally-sourced approach deserved something more honest - a brand that reflected their actual philosophy: healthy food doesn't need to be precious.

The Discovery

The restaurant's name itself offered a way out of category clichés. 'Brassica' - the genus covering cabbages, mustards, and the foundational vegetables of their menu - could become more than botanical reference. It could be the organizing principle for a brand that took seasonal produce seriously without taking itself too seriously.

The Insight

Brassica needed to feel approachable and thoughtful simultaneously. Rooted in the Sunshine Coast's agricultural landscape, but warm and personality-driven rather than earnest or austere. The vegetables themselves could carry that tone - playful without being cartoonish, whimsical without being childish.

The Outcome

Working with illustrator Estée Preda, we personified the vegetables that define the restaurant's seasonal menu. The illustrations bring character and warmth while staying grounded in the actual produce. The identity extends into the physical space itself - even the restaurant signage drew from the layered structure of a cabbage, constructed from three stacked wooden layers that create depth and dimension.

Credits

Creative Direction — Glasfurd & Walker Photography — Leila Kwok Illustration — Estée Preda

Lab Theory cannabis concentrate packaging photography
Three black round containers labeled Lab Theory, arranged diagonally on a textured reflective surface with labels reading Diamonds, Caviar, and Live Resin.
Three round glass petri dishes on a grid surface, each containing bright yellow crystalline or waxy substance, above the text 'LAB THEORY' on a black background.
Animated Lab Theory logo with a stylised cannabis leaf in the letter O of Theory, on a dark background.
A card with a blue and purple abstract design reading 'A FORMULA FOR FLAVOUR' and 'LAB THEORY' on crinkled silver foil.

Lab Theory

Brand Identity & Photography
Vancouver, Canada

The Challenge

Rubicon Organics was launching Lab Theory as the most expensive cannabis concentrate on the market - but "premium" had become meaningless in the category. Every brand claimed craft quality. Every package featured gold foil and black backgrounds. Meanwhile, the audience Rubicon wanted to reach - legacy cannabis consumers fluent in drop culture and streetwear - saw through the conventional luxury signaling immediately.

The Discovery

The concentrates themselves were genuinely premium - precise extraction, clinical methodology, laboratory-grade quality control. But the experience of consuming them isn't clinical at all. How do you build a brand that honors both the process rigor and the psychedelic experience without defaulting to either sterile medical aesthetics or tired cannabis clichés?

The Insight

Lab Theory exists in the tension between laboratory precision and mind-altering experimentation. The brand needed to feel like both simultaneously - scientific enough to justify the premium price, experiential enough to connect with culture-literate consumers who expect brands to have a point of view.

The Outcome

We leaned into the duality. Working with a 3D artist, we developed morphing gradient textures that evolve across products - suggesting both chemical reactions and altered perception. Extreme macro photography of the actual concentrates in petri dishes grounds the visual language in the real product while creating unexpectedly beautiful imagery. The result is a visual system that works on two levels: eye-catching enough to stand out on dispensary shelves, clinical enough to communicate process and quality at point of sale.

Credits

Creative Direction — Skeleton Crew Creative Studio 3D Artist — Valentin Heinrich

Wild Blue restaurant brand identity
Wild Blue restaurant brand application
Wild Blue restaurant identity detail
Wild Blue restaurant in Whistler, photographed by Leila Kwok
Wild Blue restaurant menus and signage

Wild Blue

Brand Identity System
Whistler, Canada

The Challenge

Iron Chef winner Alex Chen was opening Wild Blue - upscale, seafood-forward Pacific Northwest cuisine in Whistler. The positioning problem: Vancouver's established fine dining scene set the quality bar, but mimicking urban refinement would feel inauthentic in a mountain town. Go too polished, you alienate locals. Stay too casual, you undermine what an exceptional hospitality team is actually delivering. Wild Blue needed to compete with the city's best restaurants while feeling like it belonged in Whistler.

The Discovery

The food itself showed the way forward. Chen's kitchen operated with surgical precision - sustainable seafood, local sourcing, meticulous technique. That precision didn't need to shout. It could inform the brand quietly: refined without being precious, elevated without losing warmth.

The Insight

Mountain town authenticity and fine dining excellence aren't opposites. Wild Blue could hold both - if the brand matched the kitchen's philosophy. Let craft speak through material choices and typographic refinement, not decorative excess.

The Outcome

We developed a custom wordmark where typographic forms subtly nod to the sea. The identity extends through menus and signage with careful attention to texture and materiality - mirroring the restaurant's commitment to sustainable ingredients and precise execution. Nothing superfluous. The brand earns its credibility through restraint. Wild Blue opened August 2022 and was quickly recognized: #2 Canada's Best New Restaurant (enRoute / Air Canada Magazine), #4 Best New Restaurant (Canada's 100 Best), #31 overall ranking nationally for 2024.

Credits

Creative Direction — Glasfurd & Walker Photography — Leila Kwok

Studio Brewing beer can label design system
Studio Brewing craft brewery brand identity
Studio Brewing animated numerals brand element
Studio Brewing packaging design and visual system
Studio Brewing beer can design and brand identity

Studio Brewing

Packaging System
Burnaby, Canada

The Challenge

Studio Brewing was launching Burnaby's first craft brewery with an operational model that would break most brand systems: constantly rotating taps, limited-run experiments, new releases demanding rapid-fire label production. Traditional brewery branding - illustrated labels, unique artwork per beer, complex approval processes - would collapse under that release velocity. They needed a brand that could move as fast as their brewing schedule without losing coherence.

The Discovery

Most breweries in the Lower Mainland's crowded market compete through visual complexity - intricate illustrations, elaborate names, storytelling on every can. Studio's ambitious release schedule made that approach impossible. But what if the constraint was actually the advantage? What if a system refined to its essentials could stand out more than decorative excess?

The Insight

The brewery's name already suggested the approach: Studio as workshop, as laboratory, as numbered experiments. Each beer could be treated as a release in a series rather than a one-off product demanding unique creative. Consistency through system, not repetition.

The Outcome

We extracted the thick-thin stroke contrast from the Studio wordmark and developed a custom numeral system around it. Each beer gets assigned a number. That's the entire labeling logic. New release? Next number. The system keeps pace with constant experimentation while maintaining unmistakable shelf presence.

Credits

Creative Direction — Skeleton Crew Creative Studio Photography — Maksee

Yeti Cycles brand campaign overview and art direction
Yeti Cycles SB140 campaign with crystalline formations
Yeti Cycles SB160 bike in surreal mutated environment
Yeti Cycles SB range otherworldly landscape campaign imagery
Yeti Cycles mountain bike photography and campaign visuals

Yeti Cycles

Campaign Art Direction
Colorado, US

The Challenge

Yeti had redesigned their Switch Infinity suspension system from the ground up - a fundamental engineering shift, not incremental improvement. The SB140-160 range represented genuinely new performance territory. But how do you communicate that the physics have changed when every mountain bike brand claims revolutionary innovation? Technical specs alone wouldn't cut through. The campaign needed to make people feel that the old rules no longer applied.

The Discovery

Suspension technology is invisible until you're on the trail. You can't photograph it. You can't demonstrate it in a static image. And yet, the redesigned Switch Infinity fundamentally altered how these bikes moved through terrain. The marketing challenge: make the invisible transformation visible without resorting to exploded diagrams or engineer-speak that only industry insiders care about.

The Insight

When engineering fundamentals shift, familiar terrain stops behaving the way you expect. What if we showed that literally? Not through before/after comparisons or technical animation, but through environments where nature itself had evolved beyond normal parameters. Recognizable enough to understand as "a trail ride," but mutated enough to register as "a completely different experience."

The Outcome

Working with 3D artist Plastic Bionic, we built three otherworldly landscapes where the real and surreal occupy the same frame. Desert trails bloom with oversized succulent formations and crystalline cacti. Flora scales beyond reason, twisting into sculptural forms that feel both organic and impossible. The environments don't break - they evolve into something that shouldn't exist but somehow does.

Credits

Creative Direction — Good Fortune Collective 3D Artist — Plastic Bionic Photographers — Dave Trumpore, Eyeroam, Ben Page Retouching — Cassey Kerrick

Topographic Typography tool output
Lissajous Curve Generator output
Isometric Grid Draw artwork
ASCII Art Generator output
90s CRT Effect tool output

Research & Experimentation

Self-initiated

The Challenge

Client work always starts with a brief: a problem to solve, an audience to reach, a deadline to hit. But not everything needs a brief to justify its existence.

The Discovery

I set aside time to explore outside client constraints: generative tools, animation experiments, AI image creation, photography and music production.

The Insight

Most of it just teaches me something new about visual language, process, or what's possible. This is where ideas happen before they have to solve problems.

The Outcome

Some of it finds its way into client projects. The rest becomes tools of its own, like the Topographic Typography tool, Lissajous Curve Generator, Isometric Grid Draw, ASCII Art Generator and 90s CRT Effect.

Credits

Research