Madalena Studio grows a logo with live bacteria for a drinks laboratory

Crucible describes itself as a laboratory, collaborative workspace and creative hub specifically targeted at beverage sellers, servers and enthusiasts. Founded in 2017 by Stuart Bale, with three person the team now made up of Aska Hayakawa and Maja Jaworska, the lab also offers drinks consultancy. The big focus for Crucible is an experimental approach to flavour, something often helped by working at a microbial level. It was this fact that sparked an idea for Chris Collicott, founder of Madalena Studio. To create a fresh look for Crucible, Chris wanted to reflect its very real, hands-on process, and so he decided to investigate live bacteria.

Before Chris started Madalena Studio from his flat in Dalston in 2016, he had previously worked with Stuart at a drinks and bars consultancy. Chris also created the Crucible’s very first identity in 2017. Fast forward to 2024 and Crucible had made significant shifts, its experimental approach had heightened and it was driving production development. “There’s an artistry about the way they work, but it’s totally unpretentious,” says Chris. “Huge amounts of research and process go into their work, yet everything is centred around creating something enjoyable and fun as an end product.” To encapsulate these changes and solidifying of vision, Stuart felt like the Crucible website, especially, was due a refresh.

At the beginning of the project, Chris and Oliwia Mendel, Madalena’s designer, bounced ideas back and forth to find a strong visual basis that was rooted in the creation of drinks; they went from bubbles, to liquid textures, before landing on bacteria. “Anything digital just felt a bit lacking and inauthentic,” says Chris, and so the team steered clear of typical visual approaches to reflecting science, like lines of code, for instance.

But, with bold visions come complex production, especially as Chris and Oliwia decided to grow the bacteria themselves. “We had no idea if this would actually work, what the outcome could even look like, or if Crucible would even go for it, but on a quiet Friday afternoon I laser cut the C logo from cork, ordered some petri dishes and we got started,” says Chris. They swabbed each cork logo with an array of substances; aged kombucha, liquid culture of lions mane, household food waste, swabs from skin and soil solutions, before putting them in the petri dishes, and then placing them in “relatively lo-fi lab conditions”: a local makeshift incubator (the basement of Chris’ flat).

As Chris was intent on creating moving assets, the team had to regularly shoot the growing bacteria. Every few hours for nearly two weeks Chris captured the changes of ten to 15 samples, even through the night. “Fortunately I live close to the studio so I could pop back and shoot during the day,” says Chris, “but it did all feel a bit mad at times.” After growing and photographing the samples, the only edits Chris and Oliwia made were altering some colours to align with Crucible’s trademark neon, day-glo palette. “It felt like just the right amount of human intervention, as none of the shape or form has been manipulated,” says Chris.

For Chris, the project was a joyful one on a personal level; his long time passion for natural form and texture was fully satiated, and he appreciated taking the time to actually watch the samples grow. What’s more, they’ve ended up with a large array of highly functional assets. Due to Chris and Oliwia’s close attention to detail, they’ve built a whole library of “varying, beautiful and unexpected visuals”, with each sample creating vastly different forms patterns and textures, some comprehensive and others unidentifiable, leaving Crucible’s identity open to possibility.