Craft’s rebrand roots recruitment in cultivation and natural growth

Recruitment brands tend to announce themselves through a familiar visual vocabulary: bold primary colours, geometric shapes standing in for diversity, and playful palettes that signal approachability over authority. For Craft, a global creative talent consultancy that has spent a decade connecting design studios with senior creative talent, this visual shorthand had become a constraint. Their previous identity, while well-recognised, struggled to hold its own in boardroom conversations about creative leadership appointments. Sundry, the Los Angeles-based studio founded by Dave Rax, led the rebrand alongside a distributed team spanning Valencia, Copenhagen, Paris and Berlin. The project needed to address a specific tension: 30% of Craft’s work now focuses on senior appointments, yet the existing brand felt, as Founder & Managing Director Dan Crowder puts it, “too juvenile” for these conversations. The consultancy’s podcast on creative leadership, its series of design events, and its expanding influence demanded something that could signal care and competence to the senior creative leaders they work with daily. The strategic foundation emerged through the concept of cultivation – the intentional process of turning potential into progress. This idea gave the team a through-line that could extend beyond a single visual device into typography, colour, motion and verbal identity. At its centre sits a bespoke floral motif: four ‘C’s united as a symbol representing Craft Cultivates Creative Community. Photographer Paula Codoner, based in Valencia, captured flowers chosen for what they represent – resilience, transformation, creativity, collaboration – elements that mirror what creative teams need to thrive.