Best of 2025 Awards – part one
Sunday late night reading edition. Part two coming this week.
The editor’s note
This is the third time we’ve run an awards email recapping all the crazy shit that happened in a single year.
At this point, it genuinely feels like we’re living inside a simulation… marketing moments turned up to eleven, timelines moving faster than our brains can process, and somehow we’re all still vibing our way through it.
I guess that’s all any of us can really do.
But we’re in a strange moment.
There’s no denying the collective uncertainty hanging in the air right now. Whether it’s anxiety about work, the political landscape, the accelerating reality of AI, the economic whiplash from objectively terrible tariff policy, or just a general sense that the ground keeps shifting beneath our feet.
The truth is, a lot of this noise has pulled focus. It’s distracted many of us from doing our best work, and that’s a real loss.
So this email isn’t about pretending everything was perfect in 2025. It’s about pausing long enough to recognize the ideas, campaigns, products, and moments that cut through anyway.
It’s a reminder of why we care about this industry in the first place.
So here goes.
Exceptional packaging spotlight: coffee
Coffee packaging went unnecessarily hard this year, and it deserves its flowers.
We found so many roasters that added a level of innovation, creativity, or playfulness we didn’t know was possible.
So here are a few of our favorites.
The Year of Membership Clubs
Look, obviously member clubs have long been around, but the recurring idea of “third spaces” has dominated cities like New York and London as of late, putting a pricetag on “community”, which is ultimately a status symbol.
KITH Ivy’s eye-watering $36k initiation fee.
A24’s own movie-theatre-turned-bar and restaurant.
But on the flipside, Nike and Palace absolutely cooked on their own version of a member’s club… this one, for the youth.
They opened Manor Place this year, a free, six-day-a-week community hub in South London.
The original 1800s building was flipped into a multifunctional playground; part skatepark, part football arena, part creative studio designed to enable London’s next generation.
KITH creates belonging through access. Nike and Palace did it through participation. And there’s a big difference.
Outland(ish) stuff we loved
Bottega Veneta gave us a Jenga set. For $6,000.
Miu Miu gave us a deck of Uno cards.
Designer Tina Bobbe made a pour-over kit with natural stone, resin, and glass.
And ERL’s custom tennis racket case for Venus Williams was outrageously good.
Carousel diversification
A fun application of video and static content mixing was how brands used their intro grid shot to hook people in a lookbook format. About: Blank has been known to do this, but we’ve started seeing it everywhere, cross-category.
Tiempos Running wiht their performance campaigns.
It’s become a fun, simple way to showcase the range and variety of new product releases for brands in the first shot.
Internet moment of the year
Marty Supreme became a pretty clear case study this year in how launches actually happen now. The closest we’ve gotten to something like this (successfully) was the Brat rollout with Charli XCX.
Instead of the traditional playbook of press tour and product reveal, this felt more like a calculated sequence. Over a few weeks, the thing took shape through appearances, odd little moments, and increasingly outlandish stunts that felt intentionally paced.
But what’s interesting is how much of this comes down to speed. The rollout was QUICK, almost restless, which makes sense when you consider how fragmented attention has become.
The big, strange gestures are no longer just about spectacle. They serve as anchors, giving people something to latch onto before the next thing arrives.
To be honest, this is where launches are headed across the board.
For brands, but also for creators, designers, musicians, and actors. Releasing something now means staying in motion.
Building momentum through a series of moments rather than relying on one clean announcement. It reflects how culture actually moves right now.
The Tina Bobbe pour-over kit is a perfect example of functional objects becoming art pieces. I've noticed more designerstreating coffee gear as sculptural objects rather than just tools, which aligns with how specialty coffee culture elevates the whole ritual. The mix of natural stone, resin, and glass sounds liek it would have serious thermal properties too, not just aesthetics. Curious if the weight and heat retnetion actually improve extraction or if it's purely a flex.