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Three decades before TikToks obsession with tinned fish brought us sea-cuterie boards, tinned fish cookbooks, and trendy brands like Fishwife and Scout, there was Bela Brand Seafood. This OG tinned fish purveyor hit grocery store shelves back in 1997 with aesthetic, design-centric packagingand now, its refreshing its brand identity to remind modern audiences that it took a bet on tinned fish before it was cool.Bela (formerly known as Bela Brand Seafood) was founded by native New Englander Joshua Scherz and his mom, Florence. The brand has remained family-owned since its inception, quietly growing without any funding from outside investors. But during the pandemic, Scherz says, canned food of all kinds experienced a kind of renaissance. Tinned fishincluding Belas inventory of sardines, mackerel, and codfishbegan flying off of shelves and onto screens via a deluge of influencer reviews and recipes, earning it the official title of hot girl food. Joshua Scherz [Photo: Bela]But along with that consumer demand, Scherz notes, has come a wave of tinned fish products with a higher price point, designed with trendiness and exclusivity in mind. Meanwhile, the core of Belas business model remains centered around sustainability and accessibility (the latter is a key feature, Scherz says, for a product originally designed as a utilitarian pantry staple). The brands bold new look and digital presence brings it into the 21st century while emphasizing Belas roots as a 90s brand for the everyman.[Photo: Bela]Bela makes a splashBack in the late 90s, Scherz says, tinned fish was a dying industry. For Scherz, though, it had always been a constant. Growing up in the Boston area in an Eastern European family, sardines were a staple for his family; and, when he served in the U.S. Air Force for four years, they became even more of a mainstay at mealtime. Once Scherz returned from his time in the military, he and Florence saw an opportunity to turn their love of sardines into a family business. But, as they began to search for a cannery partner in New England, they realized that the number of options had dwindled sharply over the years. So, they decided to partner with a cannery in the coastal town of Olho, Portugal that aligned with their goals. Back then, sustainability meant supporting a local economy that was disappearing, Scherz says. We wanted to save a lifestyle, a way of life, a business, a product that was that fast declining. The canneries in Maine had gone away; the canneries in California had gone away; there were no canneries left in the United States. When we went to Portugal, sustainability meant creating a product and keeping it going.ScreenshotThe OG aesthetic tinned fishFrom the start, Bela set itself apart by packing its fish in extra virgin olive oil rather than hydrogenated soybean oil. And the company literally stood out on grocery store shelves for its playful, ultra-detailed packaging, featuring a lipstick-wearing fish mascot (or spokesfish, as Scherz nicknamed her) and a simple, sans-serif font.[Photo: Bela]One of the things about our design back in 1997 was that we were one of the first lithograph, six-color process cans, Scherz says. Everything else was a wrap, or a box, or it was dirty and dingy on a shelf with a plastic wrap. We got shelf placement instantaneously 30 years ago, because we were always a very design-focused brand.The choice to put package design front-and-center has proven to be a prescient move for Bel, as tinned fish has suddenly found itself in an unlikely spotlight.I call us pandemic gold, Scherz says. Unfortunately, the pandemic was what made sardines so popular. I mean, Ive been selling sardines for 23 years before the pandemic, and we were always in stores trying to gain trialbut the pandemic was a forced trial. People were concerned about cooking food or getting groceries and wiping them down. We forget how paranoid we were five years ago, but this product was clean, it was safe.[Photo: Bela]According to Scherz, Belas growth plan of 8-10% per year has consistently doubled in the years following the pandemic. And per a report from IndustryARC, the global canned fish market is expected to reach $11.3 billion by 2027. The surge of interest in the product has caused new companies like Fishwife and Scout to emerge with their own carefully curated packaging and flavors (both companies sell their wares for around $35 per three-pack or more, depending on the variety). Meanwhile, new high-end brands are charging as much as $75 for a three-pack of smoked eel or $26 for a single can of tuna.But Bela wants to assert that you can have your aesthetic fish and eat it, toofor prices ranging between just $5 and $7 per tin. With its new branding, Bela is emphasizing its accessibility and family-owned business model with slogans like Fish is family (amazing) and Everyones welcome to the table. And, the company is inviting a younger generation to enjoy its products with a modernized website that allows customers to purchase its products directly for the first time.[Photo: Bela]New design, same 90s vibeOn shelves, Bela is sticking to its iconic 90s packaginga smart choice, given the current resurgence of 90s-inspired CPG branding and the emphasis on visually exciting tinned fish designs (see Fishwifes popular packaging, for example). But the brands digital presence is getting a major overhaul, spearheaded by the design agency Vicious Studio, with a new logo, website, and merch that even Gen Z can get behind.The Bela wordmark is now rendered in an ultra-bright-blue custom font. Its an all-caps sans-serif, in keeping with the brands packaging, but now in a much bolder and bubblier form to bring the brands look up to 2025s speed. [Photos: Bela]Belas new look is bold, bright, and impossible to ignorejust like the New England I grew up in during the 90s, says Vicious Studio designer Nicholas Jackson. The wordmark has Fat letterforms with ink trapsa nod to old-school industry but with a fun, modern edge. Its punchy, super legible, and stands up on a shelf like it owns the place.The spokesfish mascot, Bela, has also gotten a makeover. Now, instead of being a full fish, shes a sort of talking head, a more versatile design that can be oriented vertically or horizontally. Her signature eyelashes and lips remain.[Image: Bela]The fish, still Bela at heart, got a digital-first glow-up, says Jackson. We tightened her up, focused on her head, eyes, and lips, and made her sharper, more scannable, and built for now. Shes no longer hand-drawn, but shes still got that same energy, now with knocked-out outlines and a halftone texturea little throwback to vintage print and the grittier, hard-worn aesthetic of New England docks and fish markets.Bela is also test-driving a lifestyle move la Sweetgreen and Erewhon with its own merch. The launch includes a trendy canvas tote bag, graphic crewnecks, and some retro-inspired banners (somehow, Bela is not the first fish-forward company to invest in trendy merch in the past several monthssee Gortons fish stick tote bag designed for Gen Z).In the coming months, Scherz says, customrs can expect an even larger branding overhaul from Bela. For now, though, hes focused on ushering in a new era that he calls tinned fish 3.0.If you look at Bela 1997 as tinned fish 1.0, then tinned fish 2.0 would be around the pandemic time, when it started to morph a little bit, Scherz says. Going forward, were going to start tinned fish 3.0rebranding with fish-forward flavors and getting back to the utilitarian roots and authenticity of tinned fish. This 3.0 version is not going to be about glamour; its going to be about the fact that its a protein, it has omega-3, and its a delicious fish.
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E-Commerce
Tucked in a forest of trees in Luxembourg City is a hulking piece of urban infrastructure that, if all goes to plan, will soon be taken over by birds. The structure is a two-columned concrete water tower that has been designed to function as a habitat for local and migratory birds. In contrast to most essential elements of a city’s infrastructure that usually try to avoid being infested by wild animals, this water tower had birds in mind from the very start. The water tower habitat was designed by Temperaturas Extremas Arquitectos SLP, an architecture firm based in Madrid. The project’s site is part of Natura 2000, a European ecological network of areas dedicated to biodiversity conservation, and several local and migratory bird species are known to nest in this area, including swallows, cuckoos and peregrine falcons. Because of the site’s protected status and bird population, designing a large piece of infrastructure there raised the unusual challenge of prioritizing animal needs over human ones. The project’s client, the water service of the capital city of Luxembourg, launched a design competition in 2019 to tackle this challenge. [Photo: Miguel Fernández-Galiano/courtesy Temperaturas Extremas Arquitectos SLP] Completed in the fall, the dual towers are 164 feet high and have a combined capacity of about 260,000 gallons. The concrete bulk of the towers are framed by a permeable wooden skin that encourages bird nesting as well as vegetation growth. Bat roosts are also attached at various points of the structure. The top of the tower has a nesting space for peregrine falcons. [Photo: Miguel Fernández-Galiano/courtesy Temperaturas Extremas Arquitectos SLP] In just the few months since construction finished, the structure is already transforming into a habitat for plants and animals, with several species nesting in its wooden frame. Vegetation has begun to conquer the building and its surroundings, the architects explain via email. It is beginning to be a calm place. [Photo: Miguel Fernández-Galiano/courtesy Temperaturas Extremas Arquitectos SLP] The architects say the project’s true value will be shown this spring, during the biannual migration that will bring millions of birds through the region. It could also become a model for a new way of designing water towers, which are beginning to see a wider range of designs compared to the recent past. While some buildings are known to be incredibly deadly to birds, the designers argue that this kind of project offsets the unintentional but harmful effects architecture can have on the natural world. One of the great challenges of architecture today is to not only contribute to cushioning of the impacts it has, but fundamentally to give back to nature part of what was taken from it, the architects write. In other words, the challenge is to increase the planet’s natural capital.
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E-Commerce
The wildfires in Los Angeles have destroyed entire neighborhoods, ravaging more than 16,000 homes and structures in Altadena and Pasadena, alone. Asher Bingham, an L.A.-based portrait artist, spends her days taking in the extent of what has been lost. She spends hours at her drawing table, illustrating homes that have been lost and then mailing them to the people who used to live there. One day, she hopes to have an art show that features different neighborhoods, with pictures of homes along with the stories of the people who lived there. [Illustration: Asher Bingham] Two days after the fires began, Bingham took to Instagram, inviting people who had lost their home to send in a request, and she would draw their home for free. She was’t expecting a big responseperhaps a few dozen people. But the post went viral. She’s already received more than a thousand requests. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Asher Bingham (@asherbingham.fineart) Bingham came up with the idea for the project because a close friend of hers was profoundly impacted by the Eaton fire. This friend was getting married in Las Vegas and when the fires broke out, she enlisted Bingham to go over to her house to save her cats. The fire eventually burned down the house. It was both the best and worst day of her life, she recalls. She got married at the same time as she lost her home. [Illustration: Asher Bingham] Bingham didn’t know what to do to comfort her friend. But as an artist, she figured she could draw the home and give it to her. I had just been to her house, and I could remember all the details, she says. She gave it to her friend and didn’t hear back for several days. I was worried I had perhaps done the wrong thing, she recalls. But eventually her friend said she was so deeply moved by this gesture of kindness and a piece of art that would allow her to remember her beloved home. The Instagram post followed. And suddenly, thousands of people were asking for similar pictures of their home. It takes Bingham between 30 and 90 minutes to do an illustration of a home, depending on how complex it is. She now works 12 hours a day on these pictures. [Illustration: Asher Bingham] The fact that these pictures are hand drawn is important, Bingham says. With AI technology, it’s possible to create digital illustrations of these homes. But she says that the time and labor that goes into these drawings is the whole point. These people have gone through an unbelievable loss, she says. This is not just a representation of their house, but a small gesture of kindness from a stranger. She quickly realized there’s no way she would be able to get through the entire list in a timely manner. So she’s reached out to other artists around the country, asking if they were willing to contribute to this work. More than a hundred responded. Bingham selected a handful that shared her aesthetic approach, and they now work collaboratively to go through the pile. [Illustration: Asher Bingham] Now, they have a spreadsheet where they track each person who has made a request for an illustration. Those sending in requests send in photos of their house, and sometimes stories, which Bingham saves in the spreadsheet. They then go through the list, illustrating each house before creating a high resolution scan of the picture and mailing the illustration to the homeowner. Bingham’s friend has volunteered to pay for the shipping fees. It’s six dollars per picture, which isn’t much, but it adds up when you’re sending over a thousand, she says. Eventually, Bingham would like to show all of the pictures together in an art exhibit. It would be a way for people to explore the neighborhoods that have been lost forever, and get a sense of the charm and uniqueness of the various homes. She can already imagine captions next to each picture, with stories from the people who lived there. But for now, she’s spending her days at her drawing table, trying to capture each tiny detail of people’s home with as much care as possible.
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E-Commerce
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