News

07/02/2025 We’re excited to share that we’ve been selected as the official design partner for the 2025 RGD Branding Awards! This project gave us the rare chance to create design for design’s sake—pushing creative boundaries while crafting a campaign that encourages designers to put their best work forward. Our concept, “Show Your Perspective,” became the foundation […]

10/12/2024 Excited to finally share one of our favorite projects from this year—Passport Pantry! This Toronto-based granola brand is reinventing the breakfast staple with globally inspired flavors and a commitment to clean, nourishing ingredients. We partnered with Passport Pantry to craft a brand identity and packaging design system that brings their bold vision to life. From […]

05/11/2024 Our packaging design work for UMYUM Foods has just been featured on one of the go-to packaging design websites, The Dieline. In a category often dominated by green and neutrals, ZAK’s approach brought a vibrant, playful energy to plant-based packaging. Stoked to see our work for UMYUM resonating with people out there!

01/10/2024 ZAK is pleased to have some new work up on our website, featuring two exciting projects we recently completed. The first is Powerhouse by PACK Builders, a real estate developer in Vancouver, who partnered with ZAK to develop the naming, brand identity, and strategy for an innovative pre-fabricated laneway home system. The second is TIEMPOS, […]

19/09/2024 A bit of exciting news from the ZAK team! As part of the 2024 Vancouver Design Fest, Zia and Kristian from ZAK will be speaking at Type Brigade 52. The team will be speaking about how ZAK approaches typography as one piece of a visual puzzle, something that can be used in bold and image-centric […]

03/05/2024 We were thrilled to wake up on this Friday and see that our packaging design work for UMYUM was featured on Brand New’s Friday Likes. At ZAK, we typically start our day with a cup of coffee and checking out the happenings of the design world on Brand New. Always a funny moment when you […]

12/03/2024 RSS3 is a Web3 company, and one of our favourite new clients we’ve been working with over the past year. We’ve been helping them build their vision for the future of the internet. RSS3 is focused on building a decentralized network, indexing and structuring open information in order to make it accessible and valuable for […]

04/03/2024 Super excited to finally be able to share one of our favourite brand identity and packaging design projects we’ve worked on lately – UMYUM! UMYUM is a Vancouver based food company focused on providing a variety of products at the highest of quality. They focus on creating beautiful food experiences that just happen to be plant-based. […]

17/11/2023 It’s always exciting to wake up and see our work featured on a blog everyone knows and loves – this time being The Dieline. We’ve been working with KOKOMO for a number of years now, and it’s really nice to see them get some recognition for all the hard work they’ve put into building such […]

25/10/2023 Some new brand and packaging work up on our site for one of Vancouver’s most influential plant-based restaurants! KOKOMO offers nourishing, plant-based foods that are inspired by the sun and created for you. We worked alongside KOKOMO to re-establish their brand identity and just about everything that goes with it. Packaging design, website design, store […]

05/09/2023 Continuing on with festival season, the 2023 Vancouver Writers Fest program guide just launched, outlining all the exciting events going on this year. For the campaign design this year we had the pleasure of working alongside the very talented Rafael Mayani for a suite of illustrations. These illustrations showcase Granville Island through the eyes of […]

05/09/2023 Festival season is creeping up quickly and we’re extremely stoked on our work for the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) for the 2023 season! It’s always an interesting challenge to keep pushing the boundaries of the VIFF brand, but one that’s extremely rewarding. The design, direction, and concept were done by us here at ZAK, […]

28/08/2023 KOKOMO is one of our favourite clients, and we’ve had the pleasure to work with them on a number of things over the years. Branding, packaging design, website design, store hoarding – you name it, we’ve done it. They’re such a iconic business here in Vancouver, offering fresh plant-based meals for pickup and delivery. Everything […]

21/07/2023 You might recall that our very own Art Director, Arvin Paelmo, was selected to be a guest judge for the 2023 Applied Arts Student Awards! The fine folks at Applied Arts were kind enough to interview Arvin for an article on their website featuring one of our favourite projects – the Vancouver International Film Festival […]

20/04/2023 In today’s ever changing world, a brand’s unique identity is essential, and one way to achieve this is through illustration. By conveying messages and personality without words, it’s a valuable tool that we, as a creative agency in Vancouver, like to incorporate into our work. As we keep a close eye on the creative talent […]

12/04/2023 We’re very excited to share some of the brand identity work we’ve been doing at ZAK with the lovely folks over at DeeBee’s Organics over the last few months! Led by Michelle Leggatt, we worked closely with the internal team at DeeBee’s to understand who they are, and how their brand needs to serve them for the future. The design […]

05/04/2023 This is a bit of a funny one, and it’s VERY niche but we were posted on Hubspot’s blog about their favourite green websites. As you probably know, we leaned into the green for our brand launch so we’re happy some people are taking notice! You can get your daily dose of green by reading […]

30/03/2023 We’ve been featured on Pentawards blog for our work with Nora’s Non-Dairy! Pentawards is an annual packaging design competition and hub, specifically for packaging designers. Nice to see they caught onto the great work we’ve done for Nora’s. congratulatory? Sure, but we know how good it is. Read their post here!

17/03/2023 Happy Friday! It’s always nice to wake up and see our work getting a little love, this time over on the Dieline. Our work for Nora’s Plant Based Ice Cream has previously been featured on the Dieline, so it’s cool to see it up there again. We recently worked with Nora’s to update their packaging […]

15/03/2023 It’s always exciting to wake up and have friends reaching out that they’ve seen your work somewhere in the wild. With the launch of our new website design, it seems we were picked up by the essential Chrome plugin Muzli, by Invision as well as Japanese website design inspiration site 1guu. Let us know if […]

15/03/2023 With the launch of our new website, we were super excited to get out there and submit to some of our favourite inspiration resources. Awwwards is one of the most well known, and we were honoured to be accepted as a nominee. The votes are looking good and fingers are crossed we can get featured […]

08/03/2023 If you’re attending Expo West 2023 in Anaheim on March 10th, keep an eye out for Kristian Hay, the co-founder and creative director of ZAK. Kristian will be scouring the exhibition floors, staying up-to-date with the latest trends in brand identity and packaging, as well as checking out the work we’ve done for DeeBee’s Organics. […]

07/03/2023 If you’re reading this, you’ve probably seen the new ZAK brand out in the wild. Hopefully you like it, and can appreciate how difficult it is to reshape and and rebrand your own business. After 5 years at ZAK, it was time. We’ve been living with a brand identity that was created off the side […]

27/02/2023 It’s always an honour for a team member to be asked to judge anything, no less something we’re all very familiar with – the Applied Arts Student Awards. Back in university, it was always a goal to create a project worth of being submitted to the AA awards. We’re happy to say Arvin Paelmo, co-founder […]

14/06/2021 After being one of the judges for the 2021 Photography & Illustration Awards, our very own co-founder and creative director, Kristian Hay, was recently featured on a blog post by Applied Arts. It’s a quick read but gives a little insight into the brain of the third letter of ZAK. Read the article here!

09/11/2020 We’re stoked to be a part of the RGD’s Design Thinkers 2020 event. We were asked to give a little studio tour and made a short video outlining our workspace, as well as a bit about the work we do. This will be shown next week on November 20th at 8 AM! From their website: […]

04/09/2020 Today is an exciting Friday as we’ve been featured on one of our favourite websites, Brand New. Our branding and packaging work for East 29th was highlighted and this was a welcome surprise to us and one we’re really stoked about as it’s a site that we visit on the daily.