The Brand: DisposableStudio.com
The Dream:
This was not a mission, but a dream. In 2009, I sent a disposable camera to Jakarta Indonesia, to a young boy named Michael that I met online in the first hours of Facebook. I was tired of only seeing blogs and street styles from the likes of Paris, New York, and London, I wanted to see what people were wearing, and doing in places we never hear about.
I didn’t have the money to travel and see for myself, and most of the people in those locations, at the time, didn’t have access to cameras (smartphones were not a thing yet), so I picked to most economical tool for the job, the disposable camera.
Michael sent the camera back to me, and the result was amazing. I posted the pictures on my little blog, and then… nothing, until 2014 in Los Angeles, when I talked about that experiment to my dear friends, and decided to create a magazine based on that concept.
The Process:
Creating a magazine is a process very similar to creating a Brand, you need a concept, a name, a logo, a product, … well, an Identity.
The name “Disposable” is of course a reference to the specificity of the concept, which is to only use disposable camera photography. It also refers to the value of our lives, or so it seems, where only a few are visible, and so many of us live and die without having our voice heard.
Disposable is about those quiet voices, those short rolls of simple lives, and the magic that exists through it.
This is the Brand Identity of this beautiful project.
The Identity:
I wanted to logo to be vintage looking. 70’s inspired, unisex, with the flow of a cursive font, but with a serif font. Finally, the outline version imposed itself as I compressed the kerning to an extreme, and collided the dot of the i into the back of the d.
The Palette:
The pink peach is our primary color, because it was the color of the very first batch of cameras we purchased on ebay from a wedding planning discount store, and people loved it. The little camera became viral, and a classic we couldn’t move away from.
To compliment the sweetness of the Peach, we use a Sour Red for accents.
The Fonts:
We picked Futura, a favorite among our little group, for its versatility, and bold presence even in its lightest form.
The Photography:
Our photography is mainly our community’s photography, each roll incredibly unique, each piece of life telling us something different.
Product Development:
A big part of the Incubation process is of course defining the products. When it comes to Beauty, both formulation and packaging matter, and must be connected to the Brand identity at all times. As we aimed to set OFIR at the confluent of performance and clean beauty, we wanted to design building blocks for any beauty routine.
Our packaging results from an endless curation, to find the most unique and interesting shapes, to which we added the minimal look of a White Deco on Black Glossy. Silver and Gold accents are added here and there, for some foreseen hero products in the line.
On the Left:
Die-line design of our custom made camera.
Each cover is designed, diecut and built by our team. This handmade process, even though costly, allows us to work on smaller batches and create original designs and collections.