STEEZY’s clean packs are disrupted by Joy Studio’s hand-drawn marks — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design
STEEZY is a Polish hair-styling brand that Mateusz Banaszek, founder of a Gdańsk-based barbershop, started with the educational platform Future Classic. The brief that reached Kraków-based Joy Studio asked for a complete identity, along with label design for three products – a styling cream, tonic and wave foam – but it widened over several meetings to take in the packaging and promotional material too.
By the time Joy Studio came on board, the name was set – derived from the slang term ‘steez,’ a blend of style and ease – along with the products and the brand’s positioning lines. “The initial packaging specification had also been established: a white cylindrical PET bottle with a matte finish and a white dispenser,” explains STEEZY’s Creative Director Marta Bartkowiak. “The people behind STEEZY are some of the leading barbers and cosmetics manufacturers on the Polish scene, and both their work and their personal style often push the category forward,” Joy Studio’s Owner & Art Director Radek Sadlik tells us. “Because of that, we knew the brand couldn’t simply become another aesthetically pleasing grooming product.”
“We wanted to avoid the familiar language of premium brands: overly minimal, lifestyle-driven identity,” Sadlik continues. “There is already a lot of beautifully designed minimal packaging on the market. For us, the more interesting question was: what happens if somebody takes that perfect package and starts drawing all over it?” A hand-drawn mark sits on each of the three packs. “Post-graffiti and tagging were important references, but we were equally interested in spontaneous handwriting, scratched surfaces, notebook drawings and the visual language of things that are altered by their users,” he adds. “It was less about reproducing graffiti and more about borrowing its energy, imperfection and sense of authorship.”
The STEEZY wordmark is based on bespoke lettering, and it sits in a system that pairs R-Typography’s Staff with Fragment Mono. “We knew from the beginning that the main device used to differentiate the products would be expressive, abstract and slightly chaotic, so the rest of the typographic system had to provide a strong structure around it,” Sadlik details. “Staff gave us the bold, confident headlines we needed, while the monospaced Fragment Mono introduced a more technical, utilitarian tone. We liked the tension between these very controlled typographic elements and the rawness of the hand-drawn marks.”
Each hand-drawn mark started as a monogram that came from the first letters of a product name, then pushed into a more abstract form. “Pencil, paper and one slightly unusual ingredient – my right hand. I’m left-handed, so I deliberately drew the marks with my non-dominant hand,” Sadlik reveals. “It immediately removed a certain level of control from the process. The lines became more awkward, unpredictable and raw, which was exactly what we were looking for. We wanted them to feel made rather than designed, closer to something scratched, tagged or drawn instinctively in the moment.” The drawings were digitised and refined only enough to work on the packs. “We weren’t interested in creating literal symbols for each product,” he notes. “Instead, each mark became its own small gesture, almost like a tag or signature. This gave every product an individual character while keeping all of them clearly part of the same visual language.”
“When several products sit next to each other, you first see one very consistent, almost uniform family of white boxes,” Sadlik explains. “Only after that do you notice that every box has been disrupted in a different way. We liked that contrast; the packaging feels systematic from a distance, but much more individual and expressive when you get closer.” Joy Studio created the key visuals, 3D renders and animations. “Rather than placing the products in a conventional lifestyle environment, we wanted to isolate them and treat them almost like designed objects,” he continues. “Polished steel, neutral grey gradients and hard reflections gave the imagery a slightly industrial, almost laboratory-like quality.” “The boxes remain clean and precise,” he adds of the animations, “while the drawn elements can behave in a much less predictable way, appearing, scratching across surfaces or disrupting the composition. It helped us build a visual world around STEEZY without having to rely on the usual imagery associated with hair styling or barber culture.”