“Investing our time back into arts has been really important. We started to, I guess just as everyone else is, dive into where we are in the world politically, economically, socially, tech, AI, Trump, wars – everything,” says Ken Kirton, co-founder and creative director of Hato, the design studio behind visual identities, book designs, and digital experiences for Bao, On and Sketch.

While the studio continues to work on projects for all kinds of brands, Kirton has been coming back to the studio’s roots in designing for the arts, which means that if you’ve visited London’s best known cultural institutions over the last few months, there is a good chance you’ve encountered Hato’s work, too.

Many of the exhibitions and displays that Hato has designed recently tackle pressing issues, such as Somerset House’s spring exhibition, Soil, which showcased artists who are engaging with the rich field of ecology in all its beauty and ugliness. There was an appropriately organic feel to many of Hato’s designs, from the hand-painted exhibition wordmark to the “light touch” wall texts and captions made from upcycled waste mounted on kraft paper boards.