Free The Birds designs new brand identity for inclusive men’s grooming brand

London-based creative agency Free The Birds designed the branding, packaging and typography for a new inclusive men’s grooming brand, The Fellowship.

The overall brand identity aims to encapsulate The Fellowships’ core values of community and equality – what the brand describes as the “ethos of the modern gentleman.” To reflect the brand’s ambitions to disrupt more traditional notions around masculinity, and ensure that it stood out from its peers on the shelf, Free The Birds opted for a bright colour palette, departing from the rich, heavy tones that are typical of the category.

“The tradition with men’s grooming products is to opt for grays, blacks and browns. But notions of masculinity are changing, and with that, our gendered preconceptions of colour. The bright, accented colour palette we’ve chosen conveys just the sense of modernism that The Fellowship and its target customers embody,” says Nick Vaus, creative director and partner at Free The Birds.

On each product, the information labels are arranged over a plain white background in the shape of an equals (=) sign , a motif that seeks to encompass and communicate The Fellowship’s core values. The motif appears in each description (coconut extract…equals healthy hair growth’) to help communicate a sense of “no-frills” simplicity about self-grooming, that the brand also wanted to champion. 

Simple jet-black lids, pumps, and text, meanwhile, were used to create an industrial feel, and inject a level of maturity and quality to the design. The name and logo are printed in bold black typeface along the side of each pack in the negative white space – a deliberate decision that speaks to the attitude of pride and shamelessness around self-care and self identity that The Fellowship hopes to foster within its customer community. 

“Free The Birds has done a fantastic job of clearly and effectively encapsulating our brand values into our packaging whilst also ensuring our products are attractive to the consumer. This is particularly important for us, given that we, like so many self-care brands now, are launching first on social media and via our website,” says Andrew Cooper, co-founder of The Fellowship.