IncogInverts: making the unseen world worth looking at
A complete visual identity, retail system, and hands-on education programme for an Ontario invertebrate company — built to turn a niche hobby into something a four-year-old could fall in love with.
- Role
- Brand, design, photography & education
- Scope
- Identity · packaging · trade shows · curriculum
- Audience
- Hobbyists, families, classrooms
- Year
- 2024
One identity, from wholesale shelf to kindergarten floor
IncogInverts is an invertebrate company built around isopods, millipedes, and jumping spiders — the small clean-up crews that keep soil and ecosystems alive. I led the brand, design, photography, and educational content end to end. The through-line in everything is a single idea: that the most overlooked creatures become fascinating the moment you make them legible.
Logo lockups, spot-gloss business cards, signage — with an isopod silhouette hidden inside the letterforms.
Three-tier sub-brand colour system, care cards, SKU inventory, and wholesale/retail pricing structure.
Illuminated morph wall, three-tank biome exhibit, layered banners — a teaching environment, not a sales booth.
Provincial curriculum-aligned invertebrate sessions for Ontario schools, colouring book, and classroom terrariums.
Teaching decomposition to a room of five-year-olds
The work I’m proudest of isn’t a logo — it’s the classroom programme. I designed and delivered live invertebrate sessions for Ontario schools, pulling the provincial curriculum and matching each session to what that grade was already learning. Same core concept, two depths.
Wonder first
- Led with the fun morph names, then the big idea: isopods feed the soil the way vegetables feed us.
- Framed soil health beside sun and water — all three keep living things growing.
- Art focus kept age-appropriate: colouring, observing patterns, staying in the lines.
- Brought live isopods in clear containers to investigate up close.
- Left a terrarium stocked with carrots so children could watch food visibly disappear — decomposition in real time.
Then go deeper
- Same foundation, taken further into plant cycles and biomes — matched to the grade’s life-systems learning.
- Connected the clean-up crew to the wider nutrient cycle and food web.
- Used the three-biome terrariums (arid · temperate · tropical) as a living comparison of habitats.
- Moved from observation toward explanation — why moisture, why decomposition, why each species belongs where it does.
We were all impressed at your display and the level of professionalism and engagement at your table. Education is such a huge element in our hobby, and you nailed it.— Event organiser, reptile & pet expo · Mississauga, ON
Displays built to pull a crowd and hold it
For trade shows I designed the whole table as a teaching environment, not a sales booth. The centrepiece was an illuminated wall of isopod “orbs” — one container per morph, custom-labelled — paired with a three-tank biome exhibit and layered banners that turned browsing into learning.
Desert & Savanna
Low humidity, sandy substrate. Species: Armadillidium vulgare, A. maculatum. Temperature 22–28°C.
Woodland & Meadow
Moderate humidity, leaf litter. Species: Porcellio scaber, P. laevis. Temperature 18–24°C.
Rainforest & Cloud
High humidity, moss and bark. Species: Cubaris sp., Nesodillo arcangelii. Temperature 22–26°C.
A wordmark hiding in plain sight
The name plays on “incognito” — creatures you walk past without noticing. So the logo hides an isopod silhouette inside the lettering itself: the more you look, the more you see. From there I built the full system.
Logo lockups with the isopod silhouette embedded in the letterforms. Primary, secondary, and icon variants.
Spot-gloss finish on matte black stock. The logo catches light at an angle — the creature literally reveals itself.
Roll-up trade-show banner carrying the full brand story: identity, sub-brands, and morph photography in one vertical system.
A product line that explains itself
I organised the living catalogue into three playful sub-brands by ecological role — each with its own colour, tagline, and care label, so a buyer understands the creature’s job at a glance. Underneath sat the operational layer: a structured SKU inventory and wholesale/retail pricing model I built and maintained. I also shot the species photography and designed a repeatable card template across the whole range.
The Janitors
The original decomposers. These crustaceans break down dead matter, aerate soil, and keep ecosystems cycling. Every terrarium needs a janitor crew.
The Recyclers
Slow, deliberate, essential. Millipedes shred leaf litter into the fine organic matter that plants actually feed on — the unseen engine of any bioactive setup.
The Cafeteria
Personality in a thumbnail. Jumping spiders are the gateway creature — curious, expressive, easy to keep. The Cafeteria brand was built to be the crowd favourite.
“Tell me, I’ll forget. Show me, I may remember. Involve me, and I’ll understand.”
— stamped on every hand-painted planter left with teachers
As a thank-you to the teachers I worked with, I hand-painted terracotta planters and stamped them with that maxim — then planted each with Mimosa pudica, a plant that folds its leaves when touched and, research suggests, learns from repeated experience. The plant demonstrates the very idea printed on its pot: living, hands-on, and impossible to forget once you’ve been part of it.
Brand work that lives in the world — not just on a screen — takes a different kind of craft.