Mission Barns ‣ Cultivated Meat

Mission Barns is a cultivated meat company based in San Francisco that sets a precedent for sustainable meat consumption. By safely harnessing animal fat cells and growing them in a specialised cultivator, the Mission Barns team can create meat that harbours the same taste, flavour and appearance as normal meat. The goal is to replace conventional meat production for a more humane option. The process of cultivated meat involves less CO2, land, water and of course the absence of slaughter. Today, it is much more advanced than we know it and it is ready to be tasted/enjoyed by the world. We collaborated with Mission Barns to tell their story of cultivated meat, and to show an accessible and flavour-first look at cultivated meat. Mission Barns isn’t a solution to all of the meat industry’s problems, but instead an exciting and better offering.

Together with the in-house brand team, we set out to evolve the brand into a more flavourful identity, along with a digital web experience that would communicate Mission Barns’ vision with more purpose. The key was to create an identity that feels welcoming, like the familiar scent of a family food brand, as opposed to anything scientific or technical. We wanted the digital experience and visual brand to feel indulgent, sophisticated and flavour-first, with a website that allows for empathy and connection to their Mission.

We began with crafting a colour palette that feels flavourful; a deep marbled red, fauna green, clotted cream and a sharp orange that cuts through the richness like a taste of acidity, balancing a dish. 

Spacious brand designs allow room for delicious food photography to flourish with an aroma of sophistication. The powerful and emotional copy, which reads through a modest serif, centres around the flavour-first philosophy of the brand, with reminders of the future of food.

Harnessing traditional and familiar meat references such as butcher stamps, we grounded the Mission Barns visual universe in something already loved and accessible to most. Instead of communicating the grass-fed nature of the animal, the craft of the cultivation process speak through illustrated visual stamp lock-ups.

The concept for the digital experience reflects the accessible and familiar tone of the art direction through thoughtful and crafted interactions. When deciding how to communicate the cultivation process of Mission Barns, a lengthy and science-heavy list of steps that could scare the meat-curious eater, we again opted for care and craft.

Through hand-drawn illustrations, the process page became a narrative based story in which we follow a pig named ‘Dawn’ and her journey to a long, happy and healthy life – only through the introduction of cultivated meat. Once taking a harmless sample from Dawn, micro interactions take us through the cultivator and cultivation process. Users can zoom in at microscopic levels, watching cells multiply, and then scroll out to see a juicy piece of bacon on a plate in front of you. Crafting an interactive story allows humans to engage in a deeper meaningful way, which is vital to the mission of Mission Barns. Soon Dawn the pig and her friends around the world will soon be able to sleep soundly.