In 2024, I began making leather crossbody bags with leftover leather. It started as an outlet for me to pursue my interests in sewing and garment construction. With eye-catching color combinations between material and hardware, with a functional custom design meant to carry the perfect amount of personal items, I launched Nothing Special (formerly Nuthin Sp3cial) as an Etsy store. After I posted about it on Instagram, the first round of bags sold out within 10 hours.
After maintaining the shop for about a year and a half, I felt that the brand was in need of an update. The only design I had was the cloth label, which I created in about 20 minutes in Illustrator. I needed a new design that would be able to grow with the brand and carry both depth and playfulness.
I created the brand's tagline, "Quest-ready gear for the modern adventurer" with playful CTAs like "Upgrade your inventory slots", riffing on the item storage systems of TTRPGs and video games, both of which I love to play. I wanted to associate the brand with adventuring that wasn't strictly tied to the outdoors, but rather conceptualizes "questing" as the personal goals and tasks set for ourselves throughout our daily life. During the course of design exploration for a new visual identity, I created this vector image pairing a mountain with a guiding star. I was very drawn to the idea of a mountain, which I felt represented journeying and exploration as well as accomplishments. The star is the guide, leading the way to the mountain but also ever on the horizon, representing the eternal quest of our lives.
I looked at other companies' logos in the high end bags market in order to identify the lane of typography I was looking for to represent this brand. Beyond an Etsy store, I have aspirations of branding out to many different offerings. The typeface needed to be bold, playful, and versatile. After researching many different options, I landed on Neue Regrade, designed by József Márk Ungvari. Neue Regrade is bold and authoritative yet reveals subtle personality quirks in different weights and caps. It also transitions nicely between display faces and more subdued text faces.
With a typeface selected, I began building out the brand's visual identity. I follow my own instincts on what color combinations work for my bags; instead of forcing myself to create a minimalist palette, I allowed myself to play with the colors I resonated with. I'm drawn towards cool color tones, green in particular, so I experimented with several different methods of incorporating color into things like this business card design. I eventually found this cool purple as a transition color between chartreuse green and forest green. The business card designs took shape in a "dawn" and "dusk" format, left to right respectively. I also created a circle graphic using the mountain motif which is easily added to product images and social graphics.
I'm inspired by the punk diy aesthetic and brutalism of things like warning labels, both of which combine bold typography with simplified graphics. Riffing on the idea of storage spots, I created these sticker designs that evoke early video game inventory plotting, each element compartmentalized in one frame. I created several other graphic assets associated with the brand or drawn from my early stages of design, purposely oblique like unfamiliar certification marks. The design evokes the abstract idea of "storing adventure" by containing a mountain and a galaxy alongside talismanic brand symbols.
I continue to generate graphics using these systems, continuing to riff on the compartmentalization motif and employing Neue Regrade in many different ways. The brand's colors continue to define the palette of its graphics. Whereas the colors of the bags and accessories I create is dictated largely by the material, the digital graphics maintain a cool tone, evoking depth and mystery.
In 2026 I've made a more dedicated push to include accessories like sunglasses cases, playing card holders, lighter cases, and more. I've leaned more into hand-painting each of these items, which adds time to production but brings out vivid combinations. I've also begun taking more editorial-style photographs (middle and bottom, above) emphasizing the idea of adventure and exploration. I captured a series of images on 35mm color film, which developed beautifully and enhances the richness of the materials and their settings. I'm using these materials to workshop ideas for a website landing page, mockup pictured below.
These continued experiments feel validating of the creative choices I've made so far, and provide a guiding point for future iterations of the brand and its offerings. Nothing Special is a freeing project for me, where I'm liberated to make digital assets and physical creations in accordance with my creative instincts. It's a place where I play, experiment, and say yes to bold ideas instead of chasing perfection. It's constantly teaching me about my own creative processes; pursuing the visual identity of this brand will be its own eternal quest.
In 2024, I began making leather crossbody bags with leftover leather. It started as an outlet for me to pursue my interests in sewing and garment construction. With eye-catching color combinations between material and hardware, with a functional custom design meant to carry the perfect amount of personal items, I launched Nothing Special (formerly Nuthin Sp3cial) as an Etsy store. After I posted about it on Instagram, the first round of bags sold out within 10 hours.
After maintaining the shop for about a year and a half, I felt that the brand was in need of an update. The only design I had was the cloth label, which I created in about 20 minutes in Illustrator. I needed a new design that would be able to grow with the brand and carry both depth and playfulness.
I created the brand's tagline, "Quest-ready gear for the modern adventurer" with playful CTAs like "Upgrade your inventory slots", riffing on the item storage systems of TTRPGs and video games, both of which I love to play. I wanted to associate the brand with adventuring that wasn't strictly tied to the outdoors, but rather conceptualizes "questing" as the personal goals and tasks set for ourselves throughout our daily life. During the course of design exploration for a new visual identity, I created this vector image pairing a mountain with a guiding star. I was very drawn to the idea of a mountain, which I felt represented journeying and exploration as well as accomplishments. The star is the guide, leading the way to the mountain but also ever on the horizon, representing the eternal quest of our lives.
I looked at other companies' logos in the high end bags market in order to identify the lane of typography I was looking for to represent this brand. Beyond an Etsy store, I have aspirations of branding out to many different offerings. The typeface needed to be bold, playful, and versatile. After researching many different options, I landed on Neue Regrade, designed by József Márk Ungvari. Neue Regrade is bold and authoritative yet reveals subtle personality quirks in different weights and caps. It also transitions nicely between display faces and more subdued text faces.
With a typeface selected, I began building out the brand's visual identity. I follow my own instincts on what color combinations work for my bags; instead of forcing myself to create a minimalist palette, I allowed myself to play with the colors I resonated with. I'm drawn towards cool color tones, green in particular, so I experimented with several different methods of incorporating color into things like this business card design. I eventually found this cool purple as a transition color between chartreuse green and forest green. The business card designs took shape in a "dawn" and "dusk" format, left to right respectively. I also created a circle graphic using the mountain motif which is easily added to product images and social graphics.
I'm inspired by the punk diy aesthetic and brutalism of things like warning labels, both of which combine bold typography with simplified graphics. Riffing on the idea of storage spots, I created these sticker designs that evoke early video game inventory plotting, each element compartmentalized in one frame. I created several other graphic assets associated with the brand or drawn from my early stages of design, purposely oblique like unfamiliar certification marks. The design evokes the abstract idea of "storing adventure" by containing a mountain and a galaxy alongside talismanic brand symbols.
I continue to generate graphics using these systems, continuing to riff on the compartmentalization motif and employing Neue Regrade in many different ways. The brand's colors continue to define the palette of its graphics. Whereas the colors of the bags and accessories I create is dictated largely by the material, the digital graphics maintain a cool tone, evoking depth and mystery.
In 2026 I've made a more dedicated push to include accessories like sunglasses cases, playing card holders, lighter cases, and more. I've leaned more into hand-painting each of these items, which adds time to production but brings out vivid combinations. I've also begun taking more editorial-style photographs (middle and bottom, above) emphasizing the idea of adventure and exploration. I captured a series of images on 35mm color film, which developed beautifully and enhances the richness of the materials and their settings. I'm using these materials to workshop ideas for a website landing page, mockup pictured below.
These continued experiments feel validating of the creative choices I've made so far, and provide a guiding point for future iterations of the brand and its offerings. Nothing Special is a freeing project for me, where I'm liberated to make digital assets and physical creations in accordance with my creative instincts. It's a place where I play, experiment, and say yes to bold ideas instead of chasing perfection. It's constantly teaching me about my own creative processes; pursuing the visual identity of this brand will be its own eternal quest.
Creative Director, Fabricator, Designer, Photographer: me