Four infrastructure engineers formed a boutique software collective with an unreasonably specific brief. Under After created a brand balancing technical credibility with playful croissant-forward identity.
“We gave Mark an unreasonably specific brief: create a brand identity for Laminated Labs that feels serious about the work, but is not self-serious. Also, make it croissant-forward. The result is baked to perfection. The brand is confident, weird, stylish, and totally us. Even the walking croissant animation feels like part of the team.”
Boutique software consultancies face a positioning problem. Lean too corporate and you signal bureaucracy instead of craft. Too casual and you undermine technical credibility. Most firms default to safe: blue palettes, abstract geometric logos, serious headshots. This aesthetic positions them as vendor options rather than creative partners.
Laminated Labs is a software and infrastructure collective formed by four friends with backgrounds at high-growth startups and engineering-heavy companies. Brian Gapinski, Brandon Waite, Rob Christensen, and Paul Hurlock-Dick built their practice around a different philosophy: combining deep technical expertise with personality-driven collaboration. The brand needed to reflect this duality.
The brief became the creative foundation. Croissants require precision, technique, and patience. Lamination is both a baking term and a technical process. The metaphor worked on multiple levels.
Under After developed a brand identity combining clean modernist typography with rubber hose animation aesthetics. The website featured interactive croissant animations, smooth UI transitions, and a walking croissant mascot that appears throughout the experience.
