Smart Cat & Smart Dog

Smart Cat and Smart Dog is a pet food brand for cats and dogs built around a simple but playful idea: the smartest pets recommend the smartest food.

Rather than taking the typical approach of health claims and ingredient lists, the brand leaned into personality, humour, and storytelling, turning every pack into a character-driven experience.

We were launching in the economy segment: a space where most brands play it safe, stick to generic packaging, and compete purely on price. But just because a product is affordable doesn't mean it has to be forgettable.

The challenge was to build something genuinely fun, bold, and different, a brand with enough personality and wit to make someone pick it up, smile, and choose it over everything else on the shelf, not because it's the cheapest, but because it's the one they actually want.

One of the core challenges from the legal department was to develop logotypes that could be successfully registered as trademarks.

As the design team, we took full ownership of that process, completely reworking the logotypes to ensure they would pass trademark registration while remaining distinctive and ownable. The solution was to embed graphic elements directly into the letterforms themselves.

These weren't decorative flourishes, they were structural design decisions that transformed standard typography into registrable marks. The logotypes became visual assets the brand could legally protect, instantly recognisable, and impossible to replicate.

The brand was built around a cast of characters: cats and dogs of varying breeds, each one a professor, scientist, or academic in their own right.

Every pet was given a name, a specialisation, and an academic degree. They weren't just pets. They were experts. And they recommended Smart Cat and Smart Dog because, well, they're smart enough to know what's best.

This wasn't decoration. It was the entire brand story. Smart pets eat smart food. And these particular pets happen to have PhDs.

Bold, saturated colour coding made navigation across the range instant and intuitive: coral pink, bright orange, electric blue, sunny yellow.

Each flavour got its own colour, and each pack featured a different animal character photographed in round glasses, looking thoughtfully intelligent and slightly ridiculous in the best possible way.

Illustration and formula graphics were layered across the packaging backgrounds: equations, molecular structures, scientific doodles, reinforcing the "smart" concept visually without ever taking it too seriously. The effect was warm, witty, and completely distinct from anything else in the category.

Smart Cat and Smart Dog launched with a full product range: dry food, treats, and wet food, all unified under the same character-driven, colour-coded system.

The bold visual identity and witty storytelling quickly earned the brand a loyal following.

Sonya Mudvex | Art Direction
Alina Sultanova | Designer
Nadezhda Ivanova | Photographer