The Edit: five new projects including B's Bees by Mean

Each and every day, we're lucky to discover dozens of interesting and inspiring projects from around the world. From global identities and campaigns to side projects and independently published books, The Edit is home to five of them; every two weeks. B’s Bees (an abbreviation of Brian’s Bees) is a London-based artisan producer of 100% raw, handcrafted, single-origin honey. “Their bandit brigade of bees steal wild nectar from the locally protected woodlands of Hawkwood and Petts Wood to produce the finest, sweetest goodness in the whole of the Southern Kingdom,” reveals Mean, the Helsinki and London-based design studio behind the brand’s identity and packaging. Through the intelligent use of repetition and negative space, B’s Bees’ identity successfully mimics the mesmerising interior of a beehive, in which one of the jobs of a beekeeper is to find the queen amongst thousands of workers and drones. Inspired by this, Mean developed a hide-and-seek system for the brand name within a plethora of ‘B’s, all set in the unmissable Druk from Commercial Type. “Druk’s flat-sided, condensed nature allows for very tight typesetting,” Mean’s Creative Director Mat Giles explains, making it “perfect for bold, impactful headlines as well as the signature ‘B’ pattern that wraps around the jar labels.” Encased in G . F Smith’s Colorplan Sorbet Yellow and finished in one-colour letterpress, the packaging evokes both the softer hues of flower pollen and nectar and the rugged authenticity of beekeeping to perfectly capturing the spirit of the brand. Aiming to disrupt the UK’s ready-to-drink market, VACAY is a new range of canned alco-pops with a ‘sophisticated yet eccentric’ vision. Its packaging design, courtesy of brand agency The Refreshment Club, revolves around a series of characterful illustrations that do something quirky, unexpected and out of the ordinary at every opportunity. With an aesthetic inspired by Japanese illustration, each drawing intelligently incorporates the logotype’s ‘C’ in its centre while performing a seemingly random act, such as the “stiff straight cactus doing the can-can” for the brand’s tequila-infused ‘Paloma’ variety. Launching alongside the line ‘the cocktail for your happy hour’, VACAY wants to be the cocktail for untraditional occasions.