Every object has a personality. The brief was to build a system that could express that. FMYAYA makes collectible pieces for curious spaces and when they came to us, the brief was bigger than a single launch. It was about building a world that could keep growing. One that paired each bonsai with its own musical genre, its own visual atmosphere, its own release. The question wasn't what to make. It was what kind of system could hold all of it.
We never wanted FMYAYA to be defined by a single recognisable aesthetic. There's a tendency in the collectible object space towards very restrained visual languages or one graphic formula repeated consistently across every touchpoint. We went the other way, building a system with enough range to shift in tone while remaining unmistakably the same brand.
The references we kept returning to was record sleeves, printed ephemera, independent publishing from the 1980s and 1990s. Not to recreate that era, but because those objects understood something most brands don't: that variation and coherence aren't opposites.
Typography holds the system together. Helvetica Neue does most of the heavy lifting across editorial, packaging, digital, every surface where the brand needs to recede and let the objects speak. Ease by Studio Feixen arrives when the identity wants to speak louder: the oversized collection numbers, key display elements, and the wordmark itself, whose two A's were merged and redrawn into a bespoke symbol.
The wordmark doesn't live in a fixed position. It scales, rotates, crops, repeats. Its proportions and character stay constant while everything else adapts to the format it sits in. Recognition doesn't come from repeating the same lock-up. It comes from a system of behaviours people begin to recognise over time.
The idea of pairing bonsai with music came from FMYAYA. We loved how unexpected it felt. Rather than treating the three editions as product variations, we approached each one as a real album release, developing its own record sleeve, packaging, campaign imagery and editorial direction. The music gave us a creative framework rather than a visual brief. Instead of illustrating each genre literally, we translated its atmosphere into colour, photography, composition, texture and graphic rhythm.
Jazz Trio is the most graphic. Layouts more layered, compositions more compact, typography and image in constant improvisational conversation. Ambient moves the other way, softer colours, generous negative space, close-cropped photography that gives each image room to breathe. City Pop sits between them, stronger colour contrast, cleaner compositions, a brighter and more immediate rhythm. Three distinct personalities. One coherent system.
As the project expanded from packaging into editorial, motion, digital, merchandise and e-commerce, every new application became an opportunity to test and refine the identity,
understanding where it could stretch, where it needed restraint, how it could stay consistent without becoming repetitive.
The motion library extends the system into time. Recognisable through rhythm and behaviour, not through repetition.
Built to travel across collections, formats and time. The identity doesn't rely on repetition to stay recognisable, it relies on behaviour. That's what makes it expandable. Every future collection has room to develop its own character while remaining unmistakably FMYAYA.
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