Death by Pizza.
Brand Identity & Print Design for an Independent Pizza Brand.
The Brief
Design a complete brand identity for an independent pizza brand that could hold its own against the personality-led street food brands dominating the market.
The Challenge
Create a visual world bold enough that people keep the box, collect the stickers, and photograph the menu before they even look at the food.
The Approach
Death by Pizza takes its cues from brands like Liquid Death — irreverent, unapologetic, and designed to be talked about. The identity is built around a single illustrated character: a skeleton and a stone pizza oven, rendered in detailed black and white line art that sits somewhere between vintage tattoo flash and Italian woodcut printing. The entire brand lives in monochrome, matte black substrates with white illustration, creating a visual language that's instantly recognisable and impossible to ignore.
Brand Identity
The wordmark pairs bold, distressed vintage serif type with the illustrated skeleton mark, framed in a clean rectangular border. The simplicity of the system, black, white, one character, one oven, means it scales from a 40mm sticker to a full pizza box without losing impact. Every application reinforces the same visual story.
Print Collateral
This project was built to prove that print isn't an afterthought, it's the brand experience. Every touchpoint was designed and produced on real stock:
Pizza box Matte black corrugated board with white illustration. Designed to sit on a kitchen table and make someone reach for their phone before they reach for a slice.
Loyalty card 600gsm matte black stock with a blind debossed logo on the front. No ink, just the pressed impression visible through light and shadow. Pizza slice stamps on the reverse. Feels heavy, premium, and worth keeping in your wallet.
Die-cut stickers A set of vinyl stickers including the full brand mark, a chef skull, and a skeleton hand holding a slice. Designed to end up on laptops, skateboards, and fridges — turning every customer into a brand ambassador.
Zine lookbook A saddle-stitched A5 zine on uncoated cream stock, documenting the brand world. Part menu, part manifesto, part visual catalogue.
The Thinking
In a market where most pizza brands default to red, green, and Italian flag clichés, Death by Pizza deliberately goes the other way. The monochrome palette cuts through. The illustrated character gives the brand a personality that a logo alone can't deliver. And the commitment to tactile, collectible print materials means the brand doesn't just live on a screen, it lives in people's hands, on their shelves, stuck to their things.
Services Brand Strategy, Visual Identity, Illustration, Print Design, Packaging Design, Art Direction