A bold and deliciously playful brand experience about a fatty future

Creative studio forpeople - based in Amsterdam and London - collaborated with next generation farmers Hoxton Farms. To create a fun, fatty-enticing visual brand, including new messaging and a juicy website. Raising awareness, intrigue and curiosity for these farmers that craft cruelty-free, sustainable fats for tasty meat alternatives. A truly sensory and fun experience.

About Hoxton Farms & the brief

Hoxton Farms are an East London-based food biotech start-up who craft cultivated fats which can be combined with plant protein to make delicious meat alternatives.

Their mission: to make people fall back in love with fat.

This project had to form a strategy and voice for communicating Hoxton Farms’ unique approach to bringing flavour and performance to meat alternative products: building a sizzling sensory identity which celebrates fattiness, as well as the buzzing energy of Hoxton. Cooking it together in a way which overcomes consumer fear of 'lab grown meat'.

Behind the scenes

forpeople loved the challenge to take something so unloved and misunderstood, and elevate it into something special, exciting and irresistible. Getting under their client’s skin. Connecting to behaviours and trends - in people’s lives, but also in the industry in which they operate. This meant a lot of research, conversation, hassling people in cafés, cookery and microscopes — all in the service of identifying a visionary path forward.

According to forpeople Amsterdam, the team at Hoxton Farms have an incredible energy — they’re funny, engaging, self-deprecating (in a classically British way), intelligent and rigorous. Together they wanted to redefine what was expected of a B2B brand, especially when - in the near future - ingredient companies will be the new heroes of the supermarket shelves.

The strategy: Food is Culture is Life

Together they leaned into the sensual, sumptuous qualities of fat, and what it brings to the table as an ingredient: the essence of sensory indulgence, unlocking all the flavour, creating the juiciness and aroma of meat.

forpeople crafted a tone-of-voice and message which brings that irresistible indulgence together with the environmental and social benefits (less water, land, energy, carbon emission, animal harm). All under the banner of Food is Culture is Life.

Hoxton Farms' brand identity

With a strategy and voice in place, forpeople developed a creative direction that powerfully combined a love of lipids with the surreal and historic context of Hoxton — an ancient Anglo Saxon-era farmstead in London which is now home to the UK’s Silicon Valley: overpriced coffee, independent music and midnight table-tennis bars.

They created material palettes first. Making this proudly fatty world tactile.

The Hoxton Farms monogram was the next ingredient, and a word mark inspired by East London’s traditional street signage. Setting the rule that everything fun and fatty had to be paired with a little precision and flair. 

hoxtonfarms.com

The website is a fun, sensory experience where everything comes together. 

forpeople worked with Dutch creative coder/developer Arvin Leeuwis. Crafting a bold and fun site which puts fatty flavour right at our fingertips. Focussing on to-the-point, personal storytelling, including photography by London photographer Joshua Tarn. Showing the human side to this next generation of farmers - from learning all about how to cultivate a fat cell to a fun way of getting to know the Hoxton Farms team.

Things the Dutch Digital Design curators liked: how the landing page loads up random colour schemes, the little interactive stickers that are reminiscent of UK butchers’ displays. They are loving the playfulness, including the motion design and fluid transitions.

Visually aesthethic and pleasing. The brand identity clearly exhibits character fitting to the food and services. In a bold way. Love the play on words, the choice of colour & boldness in design and shape. Over the top but perfectly so.
Dutch Digital Design curators

The approach to the UX is all about speed and clear flows - for instant understanding  of each page - with fun and surprising touches.

Arvin took the designs to the next level in development through characterful GSAP animations. Deliciously translating the visual identity into the online environment - including the hero Three.js 3D icon on the home page.

Proudly fatty. Distinctly Hoxton. 

We couldn’t be happier with our new messaging, visual brand and website. What forpeople delivered is an extension of our company culture: a playful but sumptuous celebration of fat combined with a nod to the delicious streets of our birthplace, Hoxton. And the response from investors, customers and consumers has been awesome.
Ed Steele - co-founder Hoxton Farms