We speak to Leigh Chandler, Partner & Creative Director of Vault49, to discover more about their design philosophy, their award-winning works, and future projects.

Can you tell us a bit about Vault49 and yourself?

Vault49 was founded in 2002 by Jonathan Kenyon and John Glasgow, two street artists who wanted to make London a more beautiful place with their distinctive screenprint work. After being noticed by Dazed & Confused Magazine (the result of mistaking their HQ for a squat and covering the entire building in art), they started getting commissioned by ad agencies and brands. Since then, Vault49 has evolved from an artist collective into the brand experience and packaging design agency we are today.

I joined in 2014, bringing expertise in 360 brand design and design strategy to the team. The unique way that Vault49 combines creativity and commerce, art and strategy, was what drew me in. This still makes Vault49 totally unique in the creative agency landscape today. We now have studios in New York and London, and built a diverse global team of people with skill sets that span brand identity and packaging design to strategy and client management, illustration, experiential, and digital.

What is your area of expertise?

I joined Vault49 with a background in brand identity, brand worlds, and environments. My expertise has expanded with the collaborative partnerships I’ve developed with my clients, and now includes packaging design, experiential, and digital.

I sometimes feel like my passions are contradictory. Pure brand identity design was always my thing and I really enjoy the opportunity to sweat the details, but I’ve also found a love for designing limited edition packaging – the opportunity to disrupt is enormous! That’s probably why I love our creative philosophy of “Street and Polish” so much. The duality between raw creative expression and pure craft and detail is where my heart lies.

What is the studio philosophy?

We often say that “Vault49 is not your usual agency experience”, and I stand by this. Disruption is in our DNA. As I mentioned before, our founders started out as street artists and, as the agency has evolved, we have always kept their original disruptive spirit, authenticity, and dedication to craft and collaboration at the heart of Vault49.

We think about brands in a 360 way, and we’ve developed a unique Back Alley Insights® approach to strategy. We get our insights on the ground, getting under the skin of consumers and understanding how a category works in real life, rather than relying solely on data. Combined with our creative philosophy of “Street and Polish”, it means we can find that sweet spot between experimental creativity and street art rawness, strategic rigor, and attention to detail, and then flex this depending on the brand, the brief, audience, and touchpoint.

Fuzed, 2022 Pentawards Platinum Winner, Home, Leisure & Other Markets

Congrats on winning the Home, Leisure & Other Market Platinum award in the 2022 competition! What is it like winning a Pentaward?

I’ll never forget the day we won our first Pentaward, we were ecstatic! Pentawards holds a lot of weight in the industry, so being recognized as creating some of the world’s best packaging design was an incredible moment. And then we won another. And another. And a few more!

But the impact remains. Being awarded a Platinum this year was the cherry on top, and an amazing way to recognize and celebrate the blood, sweat, and tears that everyone at Vault49 has put in over the last 20 years. Being able to attend the awards ceremony in person this year felt like a return to the good old days of black tie and champagne, which felt much needed after almost 3 years of doing most things from home and on screens.

Tell us about your winning pack

The Cannabis industry is going through a massive period of growth, and we identified an opportunity in the Cannabis vape space for a proudly flavor-forward brand. Our client also recognized this gap in the market, developing a product that uses naturally flavored terpenes instead of synthetic flavors. This fed into our brand positioning for Fuzed, “The Realest Flavors Around”.

When it came to building the brand, our challenge was to balance ‘natural’ with a fun attitude – there are no crunchy granola vibes here! – and also keep it age-appropriate.

Fuzed, 2022 Pentawards Platinum Winner, Home, Leisure & Other Markets

We have borrowed design cues from fruit stickers for the packaging and looked at how fruit is displayed in bodegas and market stalls to inspire the brand world and merchandising.

A set of bespoke illustrated icons represent each persona and builds on the flavor credentials further. Each pack comes with a sheet of these as ‘fruit stickers’ so users can personalize their vape device, too. Taking a flavor-first approach, but with a real, natural, and down-to-earth vibe, we’ve created a brand that looks, feels, and speaks just as boldly and uniquely as the products taste. It’s a project that I’m incredibly proud of.

What part of the project did you enjoy the most?

Building the personalities around flavors and strains was one of my favorite parts of this project. We got to really stretch our brand positioning by imagining the products as if they were people. We created stories for each one and then brought them to life through naming (Mango Mama, Bad Apple, etc), character stories, and bespoke illustrations that represent the worlds we imagined them to live in.

Vault49 has won an incredible 9 Pentawards over the last few years. Is there any project in particular that you enjoyed working on?

Smirnoff Spicy Tamarind, which won a Silver in 2020, will always have a special place in my heart. I and the team went to Pátzcuaro, Michoacán in Mexico for Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) to gather insights and inspiration on the ground. It was a surprisingly humbling experience. Whilst the festivities were celebratory and full of color, there was also a quieter, more family-oriented, and touching side that you don’t tend to see in the more globalized depictions of the holiday.

Smirnoff, 2020 Pentawards Silver Winner, Beverages

I was immediately drawn to the beautiful chaos of the ofrendas (home altars) and I loved learning about the symbolism associated with the items, and the rituals surrounding them. I knew as soon as I saw them that they should be the foundation of our creative idea.

Back in the studio, I worked with our Mexican designers on the initial concepts, knowing that it was important to represent Día de los Muertos in an authentic way. After that, it was all hands on deck to bring our final idea to life, combining all of the skill sets we have in-house to get to the final design – from screenprinting and hand-painted typography to collage and animation. Working on this felt like a true celebration of craft and collaborative teamwork, and ultimately what makes Vault49 such a unique and inspiring place to work.

Inspired by how doorways and graveside decorations were lit when we were in Mexico, the extra layer to this project was to make the bottle light up in the dark. I loved working closely with Diageo’s production team to experiment with black light and glow-in-the-dark inks to get to the final result. Not only was the design bold, disruptive, layered in storytelling, and beautifully crafted, it was (and continues to be) a huge commercial success for our clients. The perfect project, really!

Smirnoff, 2020 Pentawards Silver Winner, Beverages

Do you have any exciting projects coming up that you can share with us?

2022 has been a really exciting year at Vault49 for many reasons. We’ve been working with lots of new clients so there’s plenty of new work in the pipeline that I can’t wait to share once it’s out in the market. One snippet I can share is that we’ve been working with the global Guinness team to shift design thinking and create a new direction for the brand world and visual identity… more on that soon, I promise!

To you, what is the power of design?

For me, the best bit about working in design is being able to channel a combination of craft, humanity, and culture into something that connects with people on an emotional level. Design can transform businesses, it can challenge and change consumer behaviors, and can make a positive impact on people and communities. When I really think about it, the power that designers have to change the future is humbling, intimidating, and exciting in equal measure.

What would you say to your younger designer self, or to students wanting to get into the industry?

To all young creatives, designers, and those starting out: be a cultural sponge. Absorb the world around you, and stay in touch with what’s going on. You never know where inspiration will strike, and the more references you can pull from, the better.

When it comes to getting your foot on the ladder, do your research and target the agencies, brands, and people you really want to work with. Be relentless in your mission to get heard and be seen. Remember, we all started out that way.

And to my younger self: Stay brave, and always push and stretch the brief because that’s where the fun lies. When a concept or design route gets selected because it’s bolder and braver than you expected the client to be on board with, it feels amazing. The worst words a client can say to you are “That’s expected” or “It’s boring”, so never present something that could receive that response. Own your bravery and boldness.

Find out more about Vault 49 here.

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