Tincan Brands: Trash Habitats

I’ve been deep in house projects lately, and somewhere along the way I decided we needed a trash can shelter. We’ve needed one for years, actually, because our bins are constantly being toppled by squirrels, storms, or wind. We live on a hill, so one fallen can means a mess of scattered junk.

So I finally set out to create a secure little home for the cans. But because I’m me, after mining the internet for inspiration and sketching out a design, I fell completely in love with the idea of it all and started thinking bigger. Out came the calculator and the spreadsheet, and before long, I was trying to convince Alyssa to let me ditch freelancing to start a trash cabinet empire.

The fever dream passed, as it always does. But instead of letting the idea roll away with the wind, I decided to turn it into a small creative project. I’m calling it Tincan Brands, a new series of simple brand identities and websites for fictitious businesses. (Do you do this too? Send me your ideas!)

First up: Trash Habitats.

Simple Brand Identity Guidelines, covering Brand Info, Font, Color, and Logo UseAIAI

But before we dive into this very serious imaginary world, two quick caveats:

While researching, I discovered Bikebox Works, a real company that already makes beautiful curbside enclosures in London. It almost stopped me in my tracks — I have no interest in stealing their thunder and I definitely don’t want to get into the business of surreptitiously redesigning existing brands — but I decided to follow through with it anyway because hypercompetitive markets are the reality of doing business today. So I’m treating this as a branding differentiation challenge. Still, all props to them.

Second, this whole series is meant to show just how simple branding can be. The final designs aren’t meant to impress the capital-D Designers of the world. They’re meant to demonstrate that good design doesn’t have to be complicated. Because at its core, a brand really just comes down to a color, a font, and a logo.