With retro illustration and playful UI/UX, Fishwife’s energetic branding hasn’t just made tinned fish sexy, it’s reminded us that packaging can be fun again. They’re not the newest brand on the block, but with the skies turning gray for winter, we were craving a dive into a brand built on bright color, bold imagery, and unapologetic playfulness.

Founded in 2020, Fishwife took a dusty pantry staple and brought it into the spotlight, turning it into both a cultural object and a lifestyle brand. Through eye-catching packaging and a thoughtfully whimsical digital experience, they’ve created an illustrated world you can hold in your hand and click through. Working with illustrator Danny Miller, their digital-first presence leans heavily on brand building and storytelling, shaping an identity that extends far beyond the tin.

Once we started picking apart the details, we found so many delightful choices: saturated color used with confidence, a serif + sans-serif type pairing that feels retro yet modern, subtle microinteractions, illustration-as-UI moments, and a dozen other details that come together to create a cohesive, charming experience. It drives a genuine compulsion to start a tinned fish obsession…even if you’ve never enjoyed a sardine in your life. Here’s some of what we found:

A color strategy that expands the packaging universe
Fishwife immerses you in a vibrant color palette. Each SKU has its own vibrant hue, and the website uses those colors as full-bleed backgrounds, section dividers, and product page accents. This creates instant recognition: the same color that hits you on the shelf greets you on the screen. Rather than defaulting to white, they let color do the storytelling.

Serif + sans serif type pairing that feels like retro-modern charm
The friendly serif Recoleta adds warmth and a touch of retro storytelling, reminiscent of old cookbooks. Paired with a clean sans serif, Albert Sans, for more minor details and product info, striking a balance between playful and practical.

Photography styled to amplify the packaging
Fishwife’s photography seems simple, yet it anchors the site’s visual rhythm. The tins feature photography with a simple, plain background that complements the color palette. Images are cleanly composed, with ample negative space, allowing the illustrations to be the hero. Product stacks, angled tins, and overhead shots add dimension to the compositions without clutter. Lastly, recipe images and lifestyle shots use soft, natural light and gently textured surfaces to balance the bold packaging.

Microinteractions that add life without slowing you down
Hover effects and subtly animated accents bring personality to each interaction. They are tiny moments that don’t feel gimmicky but more like a digital wink to the viewer. These microinteractions, like product card tilts, subtle JavaScript wiggles on handmade SVG illustrations, and the deep retro drop shadow on buttons, mimic the energy of the packaging illustrations, creating continuity.

Why it all works
The illustrated packaging sets the tone, the photography grounds it, and the UI/UX carries that energy into motion, interaction, and narrative. On the shelf, the tins are vibrant little objects. Online, they become portals into a larger illustrated universe.

Check out our brand dissection on Dropmark and get started on your own!

At Woodshop USA, we highlight thoughtfully made products for the home, from furniture and lighting to tools and everyday objects designed to last. The site started as a way to gather our favorite finds in one place, a curated mix of useful and beautiful things that reflect good design and material quality.

Behind the scenes, Dropmark keeps our process organized and visual. Whenever we find a new product or gadget that catches our eye, we save it to a shared Dropmark collection, adding tags for where it’s made and its category.

We also update the shop seasonally, rotating in new products and retiring older ones to keep the selection fresh. To stay organized, each rotation lives in a Dropmark stack, making past collections easy to reference. This makes it simple to revisit earlier curations, track how the selection has evolved, and build future assortments without starting from scratch.

Once the collection feels cohesive, we publish our selections using Siteleaf, the content management system that powers the site. Dropmark helps us explore and refine ideas visually, while Siteleaf gives us a clean, flexible way to share them online. Together, they create a simple workflow from inspiration to publication; one that keeps our focus on curation, design, and the joy of finding things worth keeping.

Creative collaboration is louder than ever. Between Slack messages, Notion updates, email threads, and comment pings, every tool is asking for your attention. And yet, with all that noise, it’s easy to lose sight of the thing that matters most: the work itself.

At Dropmark, we believe collaboration doesn’t have to mean constant communication. Sometimes, the best creative work happens in the quiet.

The downside to “always on” collaboration

Modern creative tools have made sharing easier, but not necessarily better. Between project management boards, chat threads, and collaborative docs, it’s easy for context to scatter across platforms. Ideas get buried under notifications. Feedback gets fragmented. And somehow, everyone still misses the link to the latest version. These tools aren’t bad; they are specialized for conversation, not curation.

Quiet collaboration doesn’t mean people are working in silos.

Dropmark was built differently. It isn’t about chatting or making time for a million meetings. It’s about collecting, curating, and collaborating visually. We believe in giving teams a shared space to gather ideas without the chatter.

How can your creative team use it?

A single Dropmark collection can hold references, brand assets, screenshots, videos, and sketches, all neatly organized in one visual grid, making it the perfect centralized location. Team members can comment when they are ready, not when they get a ping, letting feedback live beside the work and not in a chat scroll. Because Dropmark is a central hub for your creative materials, you won’t have to rummage through multiple apps to find the latest version of copy for the final prototype of the website design you’ve been working on.

Quiet doesn’t mean invisible

Quiet collaboration doesn’t mean people are working in silos. It’s a strategic working pattern that shifts the focus from noise to visibility. When a team works inside a Dropmark collection, everyone can see the same source of truth. There’s no need to chase folks around to ask, “Did anyone see this?” because everything lives together. Visibility in Dropmark isn’t about constant updates; it’s about shared awareness. The team stays connected, but the connection feels calmer.

Fewer pings, better work

The best creative teams know how to collaborate smarter. They make space for focus, reflection, and thoughtful feedback. Dropmark helps create that space. A quieter kind of collaboration. One that values clarity over chatter and creativity over chaos.

Casting is a visual puzzle. The challenge to keep track of people, their materials, and the roles they might fit can get messy… and misplaced.

Traditionally, spreadsheets, folders, and endless email threads were the norm. Even with a digital shift, dedicated casting platforms can feel rigid, expensive, or overbuilt for smaller teams. And when the job is inherently about visuals, text-heavy tools rarely fit the task.

That’s where Dropmark comes in.

How casting has worked in the past

For years, casting teams have relied on a patchwork of systems to handle all the pieces necessary to fill a creative role. Spreadsheets to file folders. Email chains to casting software. These methods rarely offer the clarity that casting demands: a single space where you can see faces, resumes, and notes to compare side by side and update in real-time.

Why Dropmark works better

Dropmark is built for visual organization, with media taking center stage, making it a natural fit.

Stacks
Use stacks to group candidates by character, scene, or campaign. Store headshots, resumes, and demo reels together in one scannable entry.

Smart filtering with tags
Add tags like ‘lead,’ ‘comedy,’ ‘dancer,’ ‘20–30,’ or ‘callback’ to quickly surface the right match.

Notes where you need them
Leave comments directly on a headshot or attach feedback to a reel: “Great for role B,” “Needs stronger close-up,” “Strong improv.”

Private, but shareable
Keep your library private, or send a secure link to a shortlist when a director or client needs to weigh in.

Evolving, not static
Casting libraries change constantly. With Dropmark, it’s simple to drag and drop new talent or updates.

Case in point

Imagine you’re working on an indie short film and you have 50 headshots, resumes, and links to reels to organize. Instead of opening three programs or one very over-engineered and expensive casting database, you open Dropmark. You create a collection called Casting: The Last Metro, drag and drop headshots into stacks to organize each character, add resumes in the comments, and tags to indicate who needs a callback.

What once lived in scattered spreadsheets and email chains now exists in one visual workspace. Easy to scan, easy to update, and straightforward at a glance.

Beyond film & theater

Casting isn’t just for movies. Dropmark can double as a library for:
Photoshoots → track models, stylists, and makeup artists.
Brand campaigns → compare influencers or ambassadors side by side.
Creative events → organize performers, panelists, or volunteers.

Whenever you’re matching people to projects, Dropmark helps you stay organized, collaborative, and focused on the visuals that matter most.

Not all moodboards are created equal. Some are random dumps of screenshots that confuse more than they inspire. Others, the great ones, make you feel like you get it instantly.

The difference between a “meh” moodboard and a great one? The details that turn scattered inspiration into a clear creative direction.
Here’s what separates chaos from clarity:

Start with a purpose
Every memorable moodboard begins with intention. What’s the job of this board? Setting a brand’s tone? Exploring a color story? Capturing the energy of a campaign? Writing a quick description or naming your board keeps your goals visible and helps collaborators know what they’re looking at.

Find the thread
You want to spark ideas, not overwhelm. Create a unifying thread for your moodboard. A thread can be a color family, a visual rhythm, or just a shared vibe. Cohesion, however, doesn’t mean sameness; it means everything feels like it belongs in the same story.

Pro tip: In Dropmark, use stacks to group ideas (color, type, imagery) while still showing the whole vibe at once.

Design the flow
Moodboards are about feeling as much as content. Great ones have rhythm. Bold visuals that anchor the page or whitespace to give the eye a break, the balance between loud and quiet moments goes a long way in creating a compelling visual direction.

Mixing up the medium
Forettable moodboards often fall flat because they lack variety. Layering different media, such as type, color, photography, textures, or even snippets of copy together, creates nuance. The resulting collection feels more like a design tool rather than a hodgepodge.

Give it context
Not to be dramatic, but a moodboard without notes is just a collage. Add a comment or leave a short annotation to explain why something matters. Future-you (and your collaborators) will thank you when you can remember why you saved that image in the first place and tell the story behind it.

Build better moodboards with Dropmark
Dropmark makes it simple to move from messy screenshots to thoughtful collections. Drag and drop inspiration, organize with sections, keep it private until you’re ready to share.

Creative work can often seem a solitary pursuit. All of the long hours sketching, coding, writing, or designing at your desk. It’s easy to forget that the creative community is what keeps us inspired, challenged, and connected. Whether it’s AIGA, CreativeMornings, a local meetup, or a casual Discord group, creative communities are where ideas cross-pollinate and energy builds. And right now, when so much feels fragmented, leaning on community is essential.

Why community matters more than ever

When we talk about community, people often picture networking events or digital engagement. But lately, we’ve been interested in pursuing creative communities in real life because fostering those types of relationships can feel so much richer. Engaging with your local sphere can be the gateway to a new job, a new skill, or just a cool new friend.

Dropmark as a community companion

Dropmark is inherently private. It’s built to give you space to explore ideas, collect references, and organize your creative world free from the time suck of social media or the bummer of ads. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be used to document how you engage with the world around you.

We’ve made a list of a few ways to use Dropmark as a quiet companion to your community life:

• Event Boards: Save flyers, speaker decks, quotes, or even snapshots from a community event like a CreativeMornings talk that stuck with you.
• Connection Boards: Collect links to people you meet. Save their portfolios, socials, or projects worth revisiting later.
• Theme Boards: Track recurring ideas across talks, workshops, or exhibitions. Over time, you’ll see patterns in what excites and inspires you.

Think of it as a personal scrapbook or memo pad of your creative world.

Positive side effects you may encounter

Capturing community experiences can have a surprising ripple effect on your life! It not only reminds you that you’re a part of something bigger than your own projects but also gives you another resource to tap into when you’re feeling stuck or uninspired.

By using Dropmark to document these experiences, the community becomes less abstract and more tangible. It shifts from something you attend to something you actively build into your creative practice.

Your portfolio shows what you make.
Your community boards show what makes you, you.
Now is the time to nurture both. Start a Dropmark collection for your creative community, and let it remind you that you’re not creating in isolation. You’re part of a larger, living conversation.