Creative round-up May 2026
May has brought high summer temperatures as well as some interesting design and branding news for our creative round-up! Here’s a selection of recent items that have caught the eyes of the Ingenious team…
Adidas retro logo returns for World Cup
The FIFA World Cup 2026 starts soon, kicking off on 11 June and Adidas is bringing back its iconic trefoil logo on the away jerseys of 25 countries, including Japan, Mexico and Ukraine. The vintage Adidas logo shows three leaf-shaped foils with three parallel horizontal lines cutting through the shapes. Introduced in the 1970s, it previously appeared on Adidas World Cup kits until it was replaced by the brand’s triangular three-bars logo in the 1990s.
The kits pay homage to each respective country with local references, like florals representing local plants for Costa Rica and Chile, and a pattern inspired by artist René Magritte for Belgium. The revived Adidas logo instantly gives the kits a classic feel.
By bringing the old logo to one of the biggest global stages in sport, Adidas shows how to use two logos at once, keeping the three-bar performance logo as its main mark while the retro trefoil appears on its Originals brand of casual sportswear and in nostalgic marketing campaigns.
Spotify’s disco icon furore
There has been much debate over Spotify’s recent replacement of its default green app icon with a temporary disco ball to celebrate the company’s 20th anniversary.
Called a “dumb mistake” with “huge readability and brand issues” the icon is somewhat dark, the disco texture is unclear when shrunk to icon size and less recognizability is not an ideal outcome. However, according to Andrew Tindall, a senior leader in the advertising industry and growth lead at System1, writing in The Drum, tech brands have become so obsessed with being recognizable that they are no longer memorable - and the risk of obsessive sticking to the brand book is sterility. Tindall goes on to say the future of tech branding cannot be more flatness, more minimalism, more sans serif - it needs a bit of showmanship and emotion.
Spotify’s disco ball may not be perfect. But this imperfect showmanship got everybody talking and made us feel something - which is kind of the whole point!
Swatch Royal Pop frenzy
The recent launch of the Swatch Royal Pop pocket watch caused another global frenzy - as people desperately tried to get their hands on the $400 accessory which comes in eight pop-art colourways and is worn on a lanyard.
A collaboration between Swatch – purveyors of plastic fashion watches since 1983 – and Audemars Piguet – an independent Swiss company whose luxury Royal Oak sports watch starts at $25,000 - this is a masterclass in co-branding executed at a scale and level of brand risk the industry rarely attempts. Rather than a cheap co-branded version of the Royal Oak for the wrist, the pocket watch was a smart decision. Not a cheap lookalike, the pocket watch on a lanyard makes comparison impossible but borrows distinctive assets such as the octagonal bezel shape from the Royal Oak.
This is the first time Swatch has collaborated with a partner outside its own group and persuaded a rival of such stature to lend its most precious asset to a $400 object. Within hours the Royal Pop was changing hands on the secondary market for $6000!
A new riverside trail in Bath
Ingenious designer Kirsty studied for her design degree in Bath and loved walking by the River Avon which winds through the middle of the city, so this item is close to her heart. The Bath River Line, a new 10km riverside trail has just opened, running through the centre of the city and focusing on Bath’s industrial history, wilder nature and historic floods, rather than the better-known heritage sites the city also has to offer.
London-based design studio, Fieldwork Facility has created the brand, wayfinding and interpretation system for the Bath River Line using old flood marks as the starting point for the whole visual identity. Since the 1800’s, historic floods have been recorded by carving dates, lines and arrows directly into the stonework of buildings along the riverbank and these incisions ended up informing the project's entire visual language. The resulting brand is clean and considered, with the seasonal rhythms of the river running through it, alongside these flood-level references.
This is the first phase of a larger project. Further funding has been secured to create a wider greenway through the city that supports active travel, boosts biodiversity and gives Bath's riverside the attention it deserves.
Exhibition: Henry Moore at Kew Gardens
Why not take a trip to Kew Gardens during this lovely weather? There is now an added reason to go – from 9 May towering sculptures and smaller-scale artworks by Henry Moore, one of Britain’s most renowned artists, have been placed amongst the trees in what is the largest ever presentation of outdoor artworks by Moore.
Set across Kew's iconic landscapes and world-renowned botanical collections, the Henry Moore: Monumental Nature exhibition brings art and nature together on an extraordinary scale, blurring the boundaries between sculpture and living form.
The sculptures are purposefully placed to be in dialogue with Kew's trees and historic landscapes, revealing how sculpture can both respond to, and reshape, the space it inhabits. There is also an accompanying indoor exhibition in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art.
And if the current high temperatures put you off, there’s plenty of time to go – the exhibitions run until 31 January 2027.