TOFU in Bill Gardner’s Iconic Branding
Three TOFU Projects Featured in Bill Gardner’s Latest Book on Iconic Branding
Bill Gardner opens his book with a bold declaration: “Only fools live by trends.” Yet he does not reject trends themselves. He sees them as signals of changes in technology, culture, and human behaviour. The problem is not observing trends, but following them without reflection.
This way of thinking strongly resonates with us. Branding should not be designed merely to look good for a single season. It should respond to genuine change and equip brands with tools that continue to work long after the aesthetic fashion has moved on.
That is why we are particularly pleased that three TOFU projects have been featured in The LogoLounge Guide to Iconic Branding: Trendcasting for Logos that Last: the visual identities for Katarzyna Konieczka, Music Week Poland, and Planeta Lem. Each of them tells a different story. One begins with emotion, another with movement, and the third with interaction. Together, however, they reflect a similar way of thinking about brands. A logo is not the end of the process. Often, it is only the beginning.
A Man Who Has Spent More Than Two Decades Observing How Logos Evolve.
Bill Gardner is a designer, author, and the founder of Gardner Design and LogoLounge, one of the world’s leading platforms dedicated to logo design.
The LogoLounge community brings together more than 20,000 designers from 68 countries, while its database contains over 400,000 logos. For more than two decades, Gardner has analysed the projects submitted to the platform and published reports examining how the language of visual identity continues to evolve.
He does not treat trends as a collection of ready-made solutions to be repeated. He is far more interested in the mechanisms behind change. Why do certain forms begin appearing in many places at the same time? How are they influenced by new tools? How are screens, animation, artificial intelligence, and the growing demand for interaction transforming the industry?
Gardner has worked on projects for brands and organisations including Cessna, Pepsi, Pizza Hut, Kroger, Hallmark, and the Athens Olympic Games. His work has been featured in Communication Arts, Graphis, and the Museum of Modern Art.
For this reason, the inclusion of our projects in his publication is important to us not only as a distinction. The LogoLounge Guide to Iconic Branding is not simply an album collecting interesting logos. Gardner uses selected projects to explore the broader directions in which the entire industry is moving.
Published by Rockport Publishers, the 216-page book contains more than 500 examples, analyses, and case studies. It shows how branding has evolved from static symbols into systems incorporating movement, sound, artificial intelligence, interaction, and sensory experiences. We are therefore especially proud that it features three TOFU projects: the identities for Katarzyna Konieczka, Music Week Poland, and Planeta Lem. They appear alongside work created for such recognised brands and cultural phenomena as Duolingo, Netflix, Stranger Things, and Nike. It is an important distinction for us and a genuine source of pride.
Katarzyna Konieczka: A Mark Designed to Provoke a Response
The project for Katarzyna Konieczka received a dedicated two-page feature titled A Logo That Channels Emotion, Darkness, and Beauty. This is an accurate description of the challenge we faced during the project. Katarzyna creates objects that exist at the intersection of fashion, costume, and art. Her work is intense, organic, dark, and often deliberately unsettling. A conventional, orderly visual identity would never have been able to capture its character.
Before we began designing, we had to enter the artist’s world and understand where its power came from. It was not about finding a visually striking form. It was about creating a mark capable of provoking a response similar to the one generated by her work.
“It couldn’t just be a logo. It had to be something that moved the heart,” Adam Chyliński says in the book.
The monogram, constructed from the initials KK, took the form of an organic crown of thorns. Its interwoven lines, sharp endings, and liquid-metal effect refer to the materials, structures, and expressive qualities present in Konieczka’s work. The mark was created in both static and animated versions. In motion, it transforms, pulses, and takes on an almost bodily quality. It became not only the designer’s signature but also an element of the stage design for her show.
It is an example of an identity that cannot be confined to a single static symbol. Here, the logo is not used solely to build recognition. It creates an atmosphere, carries emotion, and introduces the audience to the brand’s world.
Music Week Poland: When Motion Is Not an Add-On
The Music Week Poland identity appears in the chapter Animation: The Future Pulse of Branding, dedicated to the role of animation in contemporary identity systems. Gardner draws attention to something that is still sometimes overlooked in branding. Most interactions with brands now take place on screens, yet many identities continue to be designed as though their primary environment were a static sheet of paper.
Animation is then added at the end. First, the logo is designed, and only later does someone begin to consider how it might move. In the case of Music Week Poland, motion was fundamental to the concept from the very beginning. The event brings together concerts, a conference, knowledge exchange, and encounters between people from across the music industry. It needed an identity that would do more than provide a visual frame. It had to express the energy and networked nature of the entire initiative.
The mark combines the M+W monogram with the form of a sound wave. It can unfold through animation, change its proportions, and adapt to different formats. Its dynamic character carries through to the promotional materials and a flexible key visual designed to evolve across future editions of the event.
The inclusion of this project in a chapter devoted to the future of motion branding accurately reflects our own approach. A contemporary identity should do more than look good. It should have a rhythm, movement, and energy of its own.
Planeta Lem: An Identity That Behaves Like an Organism
The Planeta Lem branding appears in the section of the book devoted to sensory and interactive identities. Our starting point was Stanisław Lem and the universe of his ideas. We were interested in artificial intelligence, extraterrestrial forms of life, evolution, and systems capable of developing without a single central controlling authority.
The central element of the identity became a sphere composed of animated particles. Its behaviour is based on the principles of swarm intelligence. Individual elements respond to one another and to their environment, creating a form that is simultaneously ordered and unpredictable.
“We wanted to bring many ideas together in a single brand—something that behaves like a living form,” Daniel Naborowski adds.
The sphere may evoke a planet, a mind, an artificial intelligence, or an unknown organism. It changes shape, reacts to cursor movement, and adapts to its context. It is not a closed symbol, but a flexible system capable of developing alongside the institution.
Gardner describes the project as an example of an identity designed to be experienced through movement and sensation. In a digital environment, a brand no longer has to be merely observed. It can respond to the audience’s presence, react to their actions, and create the impression of something almost alive.
The Logo Is Only the Beginning
Katarzyna Konieczka, Music Week Poland, and Planeta Lem are three very different brands. What connects them is the belief that visual identity should not end with a set of static elements. In one case, the mark carries the artist’s emotional world. In another, movement expresses the energy of an event and the music community surrounding it. In the third, interaction becomes an extension of the ideas embedded at the heart of the brand. For us, the inclusion of these projects in The LogoLounge Guide to Iconic Branding represents more than another publication featuring the studio’s work. It places TOFU within a broader conversation about what branding can be today and how it may evolve in the years ahead.
Not as a single symbol that looks the same everywhere, but as a system capable of moving, responding, and creating a deep experience in every encounter with its audience.
You can see all the projects here:
