Black Squid Design

It’s such an honour to have designed the logo for The Lost Loaf, the beautiful artisan bakery founded by the brilliant Emma Shearer at Bowden’s Plant 4.

Emma’s legendary sourdoughs and her 2025 SA Champion croissants has earned The Lost Loaf well-deserved cult status in Adelaide’s food scene.

The logo reflects the same values that drive Emma’s baking — natural, handcrafted, and soulful.

Over the past 30 years, Black Squid Design has had the privilege of creating a wide range of design work - some bold and disruptive, others refined and timeless. While trends come and go, we’re proud to say that many of these past projects still hold their own.

We believe that great design doesn’t expire. It continues to communicate, connect, and capture attention. That’s why we’re launching a new series called Throwbacks. A chance to revisit and share some of our favourite projects from the archive. Some are well-remembered, others never made it into the spotlight, but all deserve to be seen.
Thank you to all the clients who placed their trust in us over the years - you’ve allowed us to explore, take risks, and bring your brands to life in ways that still make us proud today.

Todays throwback is from 2005 - Zak Haircare - Logo, brand and packaging

The brief was to develop new branding and packaging for a premium range of hair styling products under the Zak brand.
Zak is an Adelaide-based hairdresser launching a curated collection of high-quality waxes and gels, selectively stocked in upmarket salons.
The objective was to create a clean, modern, and sophisticated visual identity - corporate in feel yet minimal in ex*****on. The packaging needed to convey exclusivity and value for money while standing out in salon environments. Each product is distinguished by a fluorescent tag in one of five colours.
Simplicity meets sophistication.

We are looking for an experienced designer to join our team. Minimum of 3-5+ years experience.

Please email your application letter, CV and portfolio to Derek Butler -
[email protected]

Applications close Friday 17th January

Construct the deconstructed - The Iconic South Australian Pie Floater

Ingredients
1 x meat Pie
Pea Soup
Tomato Sauce.
Cooked and handcrafted in the Black Squid kitchen

We’ve been honoured to participate in the Make a Mark Project back in 2022. For our contribution, we chose to represent South Australia by reimagining the iconic Pie Floater and transform it into a Gin label.

This year, the project invited us to interpret our packaging design in the form of an ‘X’ to be featured in a coffee table book.

Over the past three years, this initiative has selected 20 designers annually from around the world to create packaging designs featuring glass (Estal), labels (Avery Dennison), and embellishments (Leonhard Kurz). It’s an honour to be in the esteemed company of Sydney design studio, Denomination Design (2021) and our fellow South Australian design team, Parallax Design (2023).

Since the inception of this project we’ve become a close community of rebels and thinkers - all united by our love for glass, labelling, packaging and the desire to create new things. The 2024 edition is called Make X Mark.