Principally, Gustav’s work is distinguished by his experimentation with light and shadow and the interplay between luxurious sculptural objects and their surroundings. While he is a scholar in the thematic and compositional traditions of still life, his work maintains a contemporary aesthetic that grounds him firmly in the present.

The themes of light and shade, modernity and history, and the craft behind Almestål’s imagery, were all concepts that needed clear communication in the assets of his brand language. With only a few assets available to express these characteristics, each individual element required careful consideration, and classic typographic forms were brought up-to-date with modern materials.

At the core of the identity is a sculptural blackletter monogram that evokes a sense of light and shade by creating a lowercase ‘a’ in the shadow of a ‘g’ — the ‘g’ clearly a solid object while the ‘a’ is expressed in a few horizontal lines. In print, the monogram is always foil blocked in iridescent colours to offset its antiquated form. In addition, a chiseled serif is paired with a modern mono, balancing old and new.