Frontify presents: Mother Design and Fhirst’s fearless collaboration

Welcome back to The Dialogue, our series presented in collaboration with Frontify, one of the world’s leading brand-building platforms. In the conversations, we are exploring the collaborative relationships behind exceptional brand work through paired conversations with creative partners, revealing how studios and clients work together to produce transformative results. In this one, we sat down with Mother Design – including Head of Design Mark Sloan, Copy Lead Betsy Dickerson, and Managing Director Danielle Horanieh – alongside Fhirst Co-founders Catherine and Steven Van Middelem to discuss their partnership in launching a probiotic soda that refuses to whisper when everyone else is being polite. What emerged is a story of mutual courage, where creative ambition met entrepreneurial fearlessness, and both sides discovered what happens when you stop asking permission to be different. When the Van Middelems spent four years perfecting their probiotic micro-encapsulation technology, methodically ensuring the scientific credibility of Fhirst’s gut-brain axis benefits, they didn’t anticipate what would happen next. The functional drinks category exploded. Refrigerated shelves became flooded with minimalist kombuchas, pastel prebiotic pops and serene wellness beverages – all speaking the same hushed, beige language of better-for-you. Their scientifically backed product, the one they’d poured years of research into, suddenly looked like everything else. The introduction to Mother Design came through a mutual friend, but the real connection happened during that initial meeting. “From our very first call, it felt completely aligned,” both parties recall. For Sloan, hearing about a probiotic soda with genuine scientific integrity trapped in generic wellness packaging sparked immediate intrigue. “We were eager to create something that stood apart in a very well-designed category,” he reflects. “And to bring to life a product grounded in science and integrity – one worthy of our full conviction.” The Van Middelems found Mother Design’s initial approach revealing. “It was great to see the range of design directions in their first approach; it felt like they were intentionally exploring how far they could push the concept,” they explain. That willingness to explore extremes signalled something crucial – this wasn’t a studio interested in safe solutions. Early in their audit of the functional drinks space, Sloan realised Fhirst needed to do something fundamentally different. The sea of minimalist wellness aesthetics had created its own form of invisibility. When better-for-you becomes ordinary, standing out requires defiance. “We all looked around and realised everyone was playing inside the box,” the Van Middelems recall of their shared revelation. “The space had started to feel so look-alike, so predictable. That’s when the excitement kicked in – we decided to go all in, to embrace maximalism and create something that truly stood out.”