Madalena Studio push the boundaries of branding in their look for Crucible, cultured with bacteria — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design
A petri dish bursting with vibrant bacteria – Crucible’s identity is as intriguing, unconventional and experimental as the creative hub itself. Housing a drinks, bar and restaurant consultancy, flavour lab and a collaborative workspace, the London-based company is designed for bartenders to unleash their creativity – working with equipment such as a centrifuge, a freeze dryer and a rotovap!
To establish their digital presence, Crucible contacted London-based graphic design and creative practice Madalena Studio, who in turn drew inspiration from the hub’s experimental nature of working and their bacteria-level processes. In their own scientific experiment, they created an organic, growing visual identity, using bacteria and natural processes. This involved swabbing various samples, including aged kombucha and household food waste, onto laser-cut cork logos, which were then cultivated in petri dishes in a makeshift incubator in Creative Director Chris Collicott’s rented basement. According to the studio, colonies likely included mycelium, genus Streptomyces, Micrococcaceae, and Bacillus.
“Some worked better than others, of course,” the studio tells us. “Mostly they held their shape well, but others went a bit more wild, with root-like cultures exploding right to the edges of the dish. Some weren’t even recognisable as a letterform, but these were just as interesting and useful in terms of creating visual assets for the brand. We didn’t manipulate any of the forms, so everything that you see has grown naturally.” To capture this growth, 30 samples were meticulously cultured and photographed every three to four hours over two weeks, resulting in nearly 2,000 images animated to show growth over time.
“I’ve long been inspired by organic form and texture,” says Collicott, reflecting on the project. “It was exciting to experiment with this kind of natural growth creating beautiful, unexpected forms, rather than using code or AI, reflecting the physical nature of Crucible’s work. Having created just a few parameters, we didn’t know what was going to happen, but it was energising to watch each culture grow and develop over time.”
Afterwards, fluorescent pinks and greens were used to enhance the visual appeal (and “arrive at a visual style which didn’t just look like mould!”) and were made by inverting the images and tweaking the hue and saturation. “Crucible has always had a thing for neon, with the old identity being bright orange, so we knew when we arrived at the pink and green combination we were going in the right direction in terms of moving the brand on,” the studio reveals. “One thing that we found interesting was that because many of the samples changed colour over time, we could apply one colour setting to each sequence, amplifying the natural colour change rather than creating it artificially.”