a lid, and the rules under it

The lid holds the flavor, the wordmark, the bear, and the two numbers the product is sold on. I drew all of it in Affinity Designer.

I drew the lid two ways, with the wordmark on its own and with the snout under it, and I kept both. The snout version reads as Kova from across a table. The wordmark version reads as a flavor. I drew each of them in both colorways, cream on brown and brown on cream.

The proof came back from the printer at three and a half inches square, a hundred to a run. That is where a lid stops being a drawing and starts being a die line, a bleed and a quantity.

affinity designer · packaging · print production

Every cup also carries a Nutrition Facts panel, a full ingredient statement and an allergen statement. The FDA sets the format, so the design work is not the layout. It is getting the numbers right and fitting the statements into what is left.

Vanilla is 190 calories and 31g of protein. Fudge is 200 and 33g. The front of the cup says 30g of protein and 200 calories, and that is a floor and a ceiling rather than a description: every flavor clears 30g, and no flavor goes over 200. Fudge sits exactly on the ceiling, so any reformulation that adds a calorie to it breaks the claim on the lid.

The first composites went out with the panel block left empty. The only complete row set I had was an older one, at 186 and 197 calories with 6.7g of added sugar against a current 3, and an out-of-date calorie count on a food label is not a rounding error. I built the panel renderer with Claude Code, fed it the current recipe data, and dropped the real panels in. They have been on the product page since July 2026.

fda labeling · ingredient and allergen statements · data to artwork

A mark on its own does not survive contact with a business. What survives is a set of rules narrow enough that the next piece of artwork is a decision about content instead of a decision about color. Kova’s is five logo applications, three colors, four typefaces with fixed jobs, and one rule about the bear.

The lockup and the standard logo ship in seven colorways, the icon and the wordmark in six, and the mascot in one. The cream cuts are the ones on this page, because the page is dark.

Three colors, and one of them is rationed

• Vanilla Cream#F5EDE0The surface. Every background starts here.
• Fudge Brown#291400Every word, and the bear. It is the ink, not a second color.
• Accent Blue#077187Buttons and one emphasis at a time. Never in a logo, never a large fill.

The lids are the exception that proves the rule. Each flavor gets its own field color underneath the same brown ink, so the line reads as one brand with two flavors instead of two brands.

• Vanilla lid#EBDBC1The field under the vanilla lid, with the same brown ink printed on top.
• Fudge lid#522700The field under the fudge lid, with the same brown ink printed on top.

Two pieces the rules had to make

The menu is the palette doing its job: a cream card, a brown card, and the same brown ink on both. It took no color decisions to make, which is the whole point of writing them down. The merch graphic sets the mark in a badge with drawn lettering instead of the packaging faces, and it is the loosest the brand gets.

Four families, five fixed jobs

Roles are fixed and they do not swap. Knowing which face sets a stat is what makes a carousel take twenty minutes instead of two hours.

MADE Okine Sans Black

Headlines and stats

MADE Okine Sans Medium

Supporting labels

Geologica Bold

Fine print and video overlays, kerned tight

Chillax Bold

The logo wordmark and packaging stats. Print only

Mont Heavy

Logo subhead and packaging body. Print only

The sizes are ratios rather than points: a headline, a label and body at roughly four to three to one and a half, no more than three sizes in one piece, and 24px as a floor nothing goes under. Anything smaller is unreadable on the phone it will be seen on.

The one rule about the bear

The bear has no face, and that is the whole design. A bear is the most dangerous thing in the woods and it is also what you hand a child at bedtime. Leaving the face off lets both readings sit there at once, so someone who lifts heavy sees strength and someone coming out of a Pilates class sees comfort, and neither of them is reading it wrong.

Every detail I add collapses that. Eyes make it cute. A set jaw makes it aggressive. So the rule is that the bear does not get a face, an expression or a costume, and it never comes out of an image generator as part of a finished piece. It gets composited in from the real file. The generated set is exactly why that rule is written down.

brand system · logo system · type and color rules

I redesigned the packaging in February 2026 and recorded a piece to camera about how that went. It was shot vertical for a phone, so it sits here vertical rather than letterboxed into a shape it was never framed for. It has sound and it waits for you to start it.

packaging redesign · edit · vertical

Before Kova I built Bear’s Select. I ran it under several names with a mark for each of them, and the one that stuck is a bear’s head reduced to an arch and a scoop. It sits on this page rather than on its own because it is the same product and the same animal, one brand earlier.

I mocked it up on business cards, a tablecloth and a truck, and then I replaced the whole thing. The bear survived into Kova. None of the names did, and neither did the faces — every one of these marks has eyes, which is the thing Kova’s rule now forbids.

brand identity · naming · affinity designer