Sometime in 2025, we worked with Culture Lab @culturelab.africa to refine their brands identity.
Culture Lab didn’t need a new brand. They needed a stronger one.
We refined the logomark, defined the color and typography systems from the ground up, and built a social media framework designed to hold across content formats and contexts.
Not a rebrand. A brand made more itself.
Most brands build guidelines. The best ones build worlds.
When Niyi built Nitibia—a fictional African nation with its own currency, airlines, and cultural history—he wasn’t creating a portfolio piece. He was practicing the discipline of worldbuilding: asking what has to be true about this place for these decisions to make sense.
The same applies to brand work. Red Bull doesn’t ask “does this match our guidelines?” They ask “does this belong in the world we’ve built?” That shift changes everything.
Guidelines tell you what to do. Worlds show you what’s possible.
Link in bio to read the full Studio Note on Substack.
In a world where everything looks the same, we make work that actually moves people.
Work that makes you stop and feel something. Work that connects because it means something, not just because it’s polished.
We craft with intention, building creative work that resonates, not just gets recognized.
You can’t borrow your way into meaning. You can only earn it.
Coherence is parts fitting together logically. Resonance is when design decisions are anchored in genuine understanding—when every choice reflects an actual point of view, not an assembled set of references.
Borrowed meaning operates through pattern matching. Earned meaning starts with questions that don’t have obvious answers.
Read the full Studio Note: getunruly.substack.com
Duplicity is an album about duality, two sides in tension, existing as one whole.
The creative direction needed to reflect that. We built a visual system around contrast—dark and vulnerable, controlled and expressive—allowing both sides to exist in dialogue, not opposition.
Album artwork, photography, typography, and promotional assets, all designed to hold contradiction without forcing it.
Read the case study on studiounruly.com
BOAH Festival (@boah_festival ) celebrates African heritage across art, music, fashion, performance, and community. The identity needed to feel rooted in that heritage, not referencing it from the outside.
We built the brand from the Nok terracotta heads of ancient Nigeria—a logomark drawn directly from their sculptural forms, paired with a wordmark that balances elegance and modern structure.
A flexible system designed for recognition, built on cultural foundation. Heritage as infrastructure, not decoration.
Good design became abundant this year. Meaning did not.
Polished visuals are everywhere, but meaning travels faster and flattens more easily than form. What feels real stays with us longer than what looks right.
To be distinct today, you don’t need better skills. You need clearer intent—a reason behind every choice that people can feel before they understand it.
Read the full Studio Note via link in bio
Palmwine Music Festival (@palmwinefest ) needed a brand identity that could grow with them, not one that required reinvention every year.
As the festival expanded across cities and audiences, the challenge wasn’t designing for a single event. It was building a system: a flexible identity that could evolve with the festival while staying instantly recognizable.
We developed a brand architecture designed for scale. Logo, typography, color, and application, all functioning consistently across digital platforms, physical spaces, and merchandise.
The result: a brand that allows Palmwine to show up with confidence and coherence year after year, without starting from scratch.
Culture-led brands need systems, not campaigns.
We did some rebuilding and came out with a new website. Take a look if you’re trying to build something that lasts, not just something that looks good for now.
Studio Unruly is a cultural strategy and creative studio. We work with brands navigating moments of change—launching, scaling, repositioning—to build meaning that lasts beyond trend cycles.
What we do:
→ Cultural Strategy — clarity before creation
→ Brand Identity — rooted in context, not chasing aesthetics
→ Creative Systems — ongoing work built on strategic thinking
We don’t borrow culture. We build from inside it.
Link in bio.
Another look at Title card design and posters created for ‘Ms.Kanyin’ by @nemsiastudios .
The work was inspired by slasher movies of old. Take a look as @7ifetheillustrator works on the sketches for the main poster and character posters.
A first look at the official poster for “Ms.Kanyin”, crafted by Studio Unruly for Nemsia Studios (@nemsiastudios ).
A story brought to life, one frame at a time.
Available on Amazon Prime on Friday, June 27th.
Art by @7ifetheillustrator
