Studio N&MS is a collaborative design studio formed by Nam Huynh and Mark Bohle, two designers whose creative partnership is grounded in a shared love of visual experimentation, wit, and accessible design. Known for pushing boundaries while maintaining clarity, their studio has built a reputation for work that is both playfully expressive and conceptually tight. The latest addition to their portfolio, a series of vibrant shopping bags, encapsulates everything that defines their approach.
The name N&MS is more than an acronym. It’s a reflection of two voices, each distinct, merging into a singular creative identity. Studio N&MS doesn’t operate like a typical design studio churning out polished commercial work to fit trends. Instead, it operates more like a lab, where every project is a hypothesis, every outcome is tested against purpose and emotional impact, and every design is driven by curiosity.
With their new shopping bag series, Nam Huynh and Mark Bohle channel their philosophy into an everyday object. Their intention was clear: to reimagine a common item as a tactile and joyful experience. The result is a collection that is practical yet emotional, serious in its craftsmanship but lighthearted in its tone.
Who Are Nam Huynh and Mark Bohle?
Nam Huynh is a German-Vietnamese designer known for his meticulous attention to typographic detail. His work often blurs the line between graphic design and language itself, treating letters not just as communicative symbols but as expressive visual elements. With roots in editorial design and a keen interest in the rhythm of reading, Huynh brings clarity and structure to even the most abstract compositions.
Mark Bohle, on the other hand, thrives in fluidity and organic forms. His visual language is more illustrative, more gestural, often weaving humor into complex systems of color, shape, and symbol. He approaches design with a sketchbook mind—seeing possibility in irregularity and character in imperfection.
What makes their collaboration unique is that neither one dominates the other. They challenge and complement one another. Bohle’s freeform visuals give Huynh’s structured approach a looseness, while Huynh’s discipline lends Bohle’s spontaneity a deeper coherence. Together, they create works that feel alive and balanced.
Why a Shopping Bag?
The idea to design a series of shopping bags didn’t emerge from a client brief or trend report. It came from a conversation about public space, routine, and joy. Nam and Mark were interested in how visual design exists outside of screens and galleries—how it travels, how it’s touched, how it’s seen in motion. A shopping bag, as they noted, is one of the most visible and underappreciated design platforms in everyday life.
Bags are seen everywhere—on subways, in markets, at airports, and draped over bike handlebars. They are mobile and visible, functioning as both a utility and a communication tool. Most, however, are treated as throwaway branding items. Studio N&MS wanted to flip that script. What if a bag wasn’t just about the brand it came from, but about the message it could carry, the smile it could inspire, or the mood it could shift?
Their design challenge became how to take this most ordinary of items and make it feel like an act of care. They didn’t want to make art objects or precious commodities. They wanted to design something that people would use—again and again—without sacrificing visual delight.
The Concept: Joy Through Utility
From the outset, Studio N&MS approached the bag project with a clear conceptual framework: joy through utility. This wasn’t about designing something purely decorative or overly functional. It was about creating an item that worked well and looked and felt good while doing it. Joy was not an afterthought but a guiding principle.
This joy is expressed not only in the bright color palettes and playful type but in the way the bags engage the person carrying them. They invite interaction. The slogans are sometimes suggestive, sometimes ambiguous, sometimes humorous. You may catch yourself smiling at one or noticing a passerby reading it over your shoulder. The bags create moments of connection in public spaces—small, unspoken interactions made possible through clever design.
They also explore the role of emotion in objects. Can a bag make you feel better about your day? Can it lighten the mood on a crowded train? Can it make your groceries feel like part of a performance? Studio N&MS believes yes. And through these bags, they show how even the smallest details—like the curve of a letter or the choice of pink over gray—can have a meaningful impact.
Design Details That Matter
The designs in this series are far from random. Each bag features custom typography and original colorways. The materials are sturdy and lightweight, made from recycled textiles, and printed with environmentally safe inks. This attention to sustainability is part of what makes the project stand out. The bags are not only beautiful but also responsible, both in their production and their expected use.
The typefaces on each bag are often hand-drawn or specially modified for the project. One bag features a bloated sans-serif that feels like it’s puffed with air, while another uses looping letterforms that weave into one another like ribbon. These choices are not only aesthetic—they’re emotional. Each typeface reflects the tone of the message it delivers.
Color is also used with precision. The hues are chosen to contrast with urban backdrops: deep reds, lemon yellows, and electric blues. They demand attention, but not in a loud or vulgar way. Rather, they cut through visual noise with confidence and clarity.
The layout of each design is guided by a commitment to legibility and delight. Some messages stretch across the bag, wrapping around its edges, while others sit snugly in the center. Negative space is used boldly, giving each design room to breathe and allowing it to stand out even from a distance.
Process and Prototyping
This was not a quick project. Nam and Mark spent months developing the bag series. It began with sketches and language experiments. What words felt right? What tone did they want to strike? They brainstormed phrases that were funny, kind, suggestive, or open-ended. They tested different combinations of type and image. They printed and reprinted to get the right texture and ink absorption.
They also explored the ergonomics of the bag itself. How would it fold? Could it hang comfortably from the shoulder? Would it hold a full load of produce without tearing or stretching out of shape? The duo sourced various materials and tested stitching patterns to get it right. In this way, form followed function, but function never muted expression.
Friends and collaborators were invited to test the prototypes. Feedback was collected not only on the look but on the feeling. Did people want to carry these? Did the bags hold up under real-life use? Were the designs memorable without being too loud? This iterative approach allowed the bags to evolve from idea to object, refined through actual interaction rather than guesswork.
A New Way of Looking at Everyday Design
With this project, Studio N&MS challenges the idea that design must be anchored in prestige or tied to a commercial agenda. The bags do not promote a brand. They promote feeling, attention, humor, and participation. In that sense, they are both radical and grounded.
They also prompt a new way of thinking about graphic design’s place in the world. Not just as a tool for selling or instructing, but as a way to inject care into the objects we use every day. These bags remind us that design can be generous. It can lift the spirit, even if only for the time it takes to walk home from the market.
In turning a functional object into a moving message board, Studio N&MS opens up new potential for graphic design in public space. The shopping bag becomes a mobile poster, a mood lifter, a tiny gift. It’s design n at its most democratic and delightful.
Everyday Objects as Creative Opportunities
When Nam Huynh and Mark Bohle of Studio N&MS began thinking about designing a series of shopping bags, they were drawn not by novelty but by the everyday. They weren’t chasing a trend or trying to disrupt an industry. Instead, they were interested in what it means to interact with design daily, outside curated spaces like museums or digital portfolios. For them, the shopping bag offered a unique opportunity—a piece of design that could be seen, used, reused, and appreciated by anyone in a public space.
In many ways, the humble shopping bag was the perfect medium for what the duo wanted to explore: visibility, mobility, informality, and shared experience. The object itself is rarely admired. Most bags are branded, disposable, or purely utilitarian. But Nam and Mark saw that very anonymity as creative potential. What happens when you elevate the everyday? Can something as practical as a tote or carry bag become a platform for visual poetry?
By choosing to work within the form of the shopping bag, Studio N&MS committed to creating a design that would live beyond gallery walls, beyond limited editions, and beyond conventional ideas of what constitutes serious or collectible design. These bags are not about luxury or exclusivity. They are about joy in transit.
Language as Design Material
Central to the success of the bag series is its use of language. Each bag carries a short phrase—playful, suggestive, unexpected, or simply strange. The language operates on multiple levels: it grabs attention, provokes thought, elicits emotion, and transforms the bag into more than a container. It becomes a conversation piece.
The choice of words was not accidental. Nam Huynh and Mark Bohle treated language as both a message and a material. Some phrases are familiar but framed differently, like “More Please,” which reads as both a polite request and a cheeky demand. Others are more abstract, like “Maybe Yes,” leaving room for interpretation. In each case, the message is deliberately open-ended.
The phrases don’t advertise a product or promote the studio. Instead, they offer a moment—an invitation to smile, think, or wonder. They act like small public signs, designed not to direct but to connect. You might be walking behind someone with a bag that reads “Hold Me Gently,” and for a brief second, you’re part of the joke or sentiment, whether you know them or not.
These are small moments, but they’re powerful. They show how language in design doesn’t have to be dry or functional. It can be funny, emotional, even poetic. In these bags, language becomes a surface, a sound, a character—an essential part of the design rather than just a label or caption.
Typography as Expression
Just as the text itself is carefully selected, the typography is designed to reflect and amplify the tone of each message. The letters are not merely tools of legibility—they are characters in the performance of the bag. Each bag features custom or heavily modified typography that responds to the phrase it carries.
For example, a phrase like “Nice to Meet You” is set in a rounded, slightly inflated sans-serif that feels like a handshake in typographic form—warm, friendly, and confident. Another bag that reads “I Forgot What I Wanted” uses a wobblier, uneven set of letterforms, which mirror the confusion or forgetfulness of the statement. These visual choices are deeply intentional. They are part of what makes each design resonate not only intellectually but emotionally.
Nam Huynh’s background in editorial typography and typographic systems brings a sense of order and refinement to the wildness of the forms. Mark Bohle, with his illustrative instincts, pushes the letters beyond the expected, twisting them, stretching them, or letting them misbehave just enough. The result is a typographic language that is both clear and charismatic.
The bags serve as a showcase of how typography can communicate mood as much as meaning. This approach places the designs in a lineage of expressive typographers who treat letters as visual building blocks, capable of telling stories beyond the literal.
Color as Mood
Color is another defining feature of the series. Each bag uses a bold and unexpected palette that refuses to blend into the urban landscape. These are not beige cotton totes or monochrome carryalls. They are visual signals, designed to catch the eye from across a street or café. The colors are bright, punchy, and often layered in ways that evoke emotion rather than adhere to trend.
The selection of colors was guided by emotional associations. A pale pink background might serve as a gentle canvas for a sharp red message. A saturated lemon yellow might hold up a sky blue typeface that feels like daylight. These combinations are intuitive, not formulaic. They draw from a shared sensibility between the two designers—one that values color not only for its aesthetic punch but for its psychological weight.
What makes the color work successfully is its ability to activate feeling without overwhelming function. The bags remain readable, practical, and wearable. Yet they also lift the mood of their surroundings. Color here is not decorative. It is active. It engages the user and the public in a kind of silent dialogue.
Object as Interaction
One of the key ideas driving this project is that design doesn’t have to be static. The shopping bag is not meant to be admired on a screen or stored on a shelf. It is meant to be used, to move through the world, to participate in daily life. Studio N&MS embraced this idea fully.
Each bag was designed with use in mind. They are lightweight but durable, made from recycled textiles that can endure repeated wear and washing. The straps are sturdy, the seams reinforced. The size is generous without being cumbersome, making them suitable for groceries, books, laptops, or random errands. But beyond function, the bags were made to be visible.
The placement of text on the bags considers how people carry them—on the shoulder, at the side, across the chest. The text wraps around or sits squarely, depending on how the designers want it to be read. This attention to spatial interaction reflects the studio’s broader interest in how design behaves in real environments.
A bag might be folded under an arm, tossed on a bench, or hung from a hook, but it remains expressive. Even crumpled, it carries its message. In this way, the object becomes a living design—constantly changing, constantly in use, always part of the scene.
Design as a Public Gesture
While the bags began as an internal studio project, they quickly took on a broader significance. Once released, they became part of public life. People began carrying them through cities, into shops, onto trains. Passersby noticed. Friends sent pictures. The bags became small pieces of design activism—quiet reminders that beauty and humor can live in the everyday.
This was precisely the goal. Studio N&MS believes that design should not be confined to privileged spaces. It should be part of the shared visual environment. These bags serve that purpose. They introduce unexpected creativity into ordinary settings. They spark micro-interactions between strangers. They shift moods, however slightly.
By doing so, they challenge the hierarchy of design. They say that a shopping bag can matter as much as a poster or book cover. People deserve good design in the objects they carry every day. That function and feeling are not separate.
The bags also prompt questions. What else can be reimagined with care and humor? What other objects have we overlooked as creative surfaces? What happens when design leaves the studio and enters the street? The bag series doesn’t just answer these questions—it invites more.
A Model for Purposeful Play
There is a balance in the work of Studio N&MS—a sense of discipline behind the fun, of intention behind the playfulness. The shopping bag series exemplifies this balance. Each element—word, typeface, color, material—is considered. Yet nothing feels overworked. The designs breathe. They allow space for interpretation and emotion.
This approach has inspired other designers and students to reconsider how they think about objects, formats, and audience. It offers a model of purposeful play, where experimentation is guided by empathy and craft.
The success of the series also highlights a broader movement in design—a shift toward human-centered creativity. In a time when much design is driven by metrics and marketing, projects like this remind us of the deeper potential of visual communication: to connect, to surprise, and to bring moments of joy into people’s lives.
What’s Next for the Bag Series
Following the enthusiastic response to the initial launch, Studio N&MS is considering expanding the series. New phrases are in development. Alternate materials, such as weatherproof coatings or collapsible formats, are being explored. There is also interest in collaborating with other creatives—poets, artists, musicians—who could bring their voices into the next iteration of the project.
What remains consistent is the studio’s commitment to joy, accessibility, and public engagement. The bags will continue to be made for real use, not decorative novelty. They will continue to live out in the world, not in storage.
For Nam Huynh and Mark Bohle, this is more than a product. It’s a philosophy. It’s a belief that design belongs everywhere, and that even the most familiar objects can carry the spark of something new.
The Urban Landscape as a Design Canvas
Cities are layered with visual language—billboards, street signs, stickers, graffiti, advertising, neon, hand-painted shop signs, and everything in between. Studio N&MS understands this saturated environment not as competition, but as context. With their series of vibrant shopping bags, Nam Huynh and Mark Bohle explore how personal items like bags can participate in and subtly shift this complex visual ecology.
Unlike posters or signage, which are fixed in location, a shopping bag is mobile. It moves with the person carrying it, reacting to the environment in dynamic ways. The design doesn’t just exist in a static composition—it moves through crowds, rides subways, enters offices, cafes, markets, buses, stairwells, and streets. The bags become part of the city’s flow.
Nam and Mark have approached this reality with a strategic eye. The typography, color, and phrasing on each bag are carefully chosen to stand out against common urban backdrops—gray pavement, glass buildings, brick walls, weathered wood, fluorescent-lit interiors. Their design interventions are modest in size but expansive in impact. A flash of pink with a typographic twist is often more striking than a large billboard screaming for attention.
In this way, the bag series operates as a form of soft urban intervention. It does not disrupt the cityscape aggressively but weaves into it, introducing small moments of color, humor, and reflection into otherwise ordinary routines.
Micro-Communication in Public Spaces
Public spaces are filled with unspoken interactions—glances exchanged, overheard fragments of conversation, silent acknowledgments between strangers. Studio N&MS taps into this subtle social theatre with their bag designs. The bags carry phrases that, while brief and ambiguous, invite a kind of visual intimacy. When someone reads the text on a passing bag, a fleeting moment of connection occurs.
These moments are designed, not accidental. Nam and Mark have chosen phrases that are deliberately open, personal, or disarmingly simple. “Yes Maybe,” “Still Thinking,” or “This Is Something” all work as prompts for interpretation. They don’t tell the reader what to think; they suggest a space where thought can happen.
This is a form of micro-communication—a quiet, visual dialogue between strangers. The wearer of the bag becomes a kind of silent broadcaster, and those who notice become participants in a brief shared experience. It’s a democratic exchange. No app, no purchase, no explanation required.
Unlike conventional branding, which aims to imprint a logo or identity, these bags aim to trigger awareness. They ask people to pay attention—not to the brand, but to a feeling or idea. In doing so, Studio N&MS offers an alternative vision for how visual communication can function in public life.
The Role of Humor in Design
Humor has always played a role in the work of Studio N&MS, but in theBagg series, it becomes a defining feature. The humor is not loud or sarcastic. It’s soft, observational, and sometimes absurd. A bag that reads “Why Not Me?” could be read as self-pity, self-confidence, or dry existential musing. A bag that says “Thanks Again” feels polite until you realize it’s printed in massive letters on bright yellow, turning formality into friendly sarcasm.
Nam and Mark understand that humor in design isn’t about punchlines. It’s about tone, rhythm, and timing. It’s about understanding how people read and respond to language in different contexts. They know that in the middle of a busy commute or while waiting in line at a grocery store, a small smile can have real emotional value.
The bags never try to be funny in the way advertising does. They don’t tell jokes. They don’t rely on cultural references or trends. Instead, they create space for interpretation. That ambiguity is where the humor lives—in the uncertainty of meaning, the surprise of seeing something strange on a functional object.
This subtlety is what makes the humor durable. The more you see the bag, the more you think about what it’s saying. Some bags might even change meaning depending on your mood or the situation. That elasticity is rare in design and shows the depth of thought behind each piece.
Rethinking Design Distribution
One of the key aspects of the project is its accessibility. The bags are not framed artwork or limited-run zines. They are affordable, practical items that anyone can buy and use. This decision is fundamental to the values of Studio N&MS. Nam Huynh and Mark Bohle believe that good design should be part of daily life, not reserved for collectors or institutions.
By choosing to work in the format of reusable shopping bags, they’ve effectively bypassed traditional gatekeepers of design. No gallery approval, no brand collaboration, no expensive production run. The bags are self-initiated, produced independently, and distributed through selected online and physical shops.
This model of distribution reflects a deeper philosophy about how creative work should live in the world. Instead of prioritizing scarcity or exclusivity, the studio focuses on reach and relevance. The bags are priced so that they can be used, not saved. They are intended to wear down, wrinkle, stain, and fade over time. That aging is part of the story.
This approach has helped the bags spread organically. People buy one, use it, get asked about it, and then share the project. Word of mouth becomes more effective than any marketing campaign. The bags move from studio to street in a way that feels honest and intentional.
Collaborations and Community Feedback
From the beginning, Nam and Mark have treated this project as a living system. They are deeply engaged with the people who use the bags, listen to feedback, and observe how the designs behave in the world. Friends, colleagues, students, and customers have all contributed ideas, shared photos, or commented on which bags resonate most.
This feedback loop has shaped the ongoing development of the series. Some phrases came directly from conversations. Others were edited after seeing how they looked in real environments. Typography was adjusted for visibility, and materials were tested under different weather conditions. It’s an iterative design process grounded in real-world use.
The designers have also expressed interest in collaborative editions. Future iterations may involve guest phrases or graphics by poets, illustrators, or even non-designers. The goal is to keep the project open and evolving, reflecting the diversity of people who use and carry the bags.
What remains consistent is the spirit of generosity that guides the project. This is not a one-off collection designed to impress the design world. It’s a platform for ongoing expression, shaped by a growing community of users who carry the bags, interpret them, and share them with others.
Teaching Through Practice
Both Nam Huynh and Mark Bohle have academic backgrounds and often work with students and young designers. The bag series has become a valuable teaching tool, not in a formal curriculum, but in the example it sets. It shows how a self-initiated project can balance concept and craft, audience and authorship, utility and expression.
For many emerging designers, the pressure to create portfolio-ready work or land prestigious commissions can be overwhelming. The bag series demonstrates that meaningful design doesn’t have to wait for permission. It can begin with a simple idea, a shared value, and a commitment to quality.
Nam and Mark often speak about design as a way of thinking, not just making. The bags reflect that philosophy. They’re rooted in questions: How do people experience design in daily life? What emotional tone can a practical object carry? How do you measure the success of a project that aims to create joy?
By sharing their process openly, through talks, interviews, and social media, the studio invites others to experiment. They encourage play, risk, and imperfection. The bags are polished, yes, but they’re not precious. That balance between care and casualness is one of the most important lessons the project offers.
The Enduring Value of the Ordinary
In an era dominated by high-concept branding, digital saturation, and data-driven content, the Studio N&MS shopping bag series reminds us of the enduring power of ordinary things. A bag may seem like a small thing, almost too small to matter. But Nam Huynh and Mark Bohle have shown that within the constraints of a rectangle of fabric, immense creativity can unfold.
The project asks us to look again at what we take for granted: the bag you carry to the shop, the message you glance at on the train, the color that catches your eye on a rainy morning. These moments are not disposable. They shape how we feel, how we move, and how we see the world.
By investing energy, intelligence, and humor into these overlooked objects, Studio N&MS is practicing a form of quiet activism. They are designing not for spectacle, but for presence—for those quiet, unguarded moments when design doesn’t shout, but simply makes you feel something.
And in doing so, they are making the case that graphic design, at its best, is not just about message delivery or brand identity. It is about attention, emotion, and care. It is about making life a little more thoughtful, one bag at a time.
Evolving the Narrative Through New Editions
What began as a handful of phrases on colorful shopping bags has steadily evolved into a full-scale narrative platform for Studio N&MS. Nam Huynh and Mark Bohle have continued refining and expanding the project, not simply by adding more designs, but by deepening the thematic scope of the messages and exploring new visual strategies. The result is a project that retains its original charm while constantly pushing into new territory.
Rather than treating the initial success of the bag series as a final destination, the designers view it as a stepping stone for continued experimentation. The newer editions introduce fresh typographic treatments, more complex color layering, and subtle shifts in format—each one a deliberate move to test what the bag as a medium can contain.
Importantly, they are not just recycling the same approach or repeating what worked. Every new iteration comes with a recalibration of voice, tone, and design. The phrases are now sometimes longer, more narrative, or more abstract. Some editions whisper rather than announce. Some play with silence. The studio has started exploring designs where the text is partially hidden when the bag is folded or slung over a shoulder, activating different layers of meaning depending on how it’s carried.
These shifts are not gimmicks. They reflect the studio’s evolving understanding of how people live with objects—and how objects, in turn, speak back over time.
The Materiality of Use
One of the most interesting challenges that Nam Huynh and Mark Bohle have addressed in the development of the bag series is how materials behave in real life. Shopping bags are exposed to wear, weight, moisture, folding, and all kinds of unpredictable treatment. Rather than resisting this reality, Studio N&MS embraces it.
The team has spent considerable time testing fabrics that not only hold up structurally but also age gracefully. Cotton blends that soften without collapsing, synthetic materials that maintain color vibrancy without cracking, reinforced handles that don’t dig into the shoulder—these considerations matter. A well-designed bag needs to perform over time, not just appear appealing on launch day.
This focus on material endurance also informs how the text and graphics are printed. The designers moved away from techniques that flake or fade quickly and instead opted for printing methods that bond directly into the fabric. In doing so, they treat the visual design not as a layer but as part of the object’s core identity.
Every crease and fold that the bag develops adds to its story. This philosophy mirrors the studio’s belief that good design should improve with use, not diminish. The material life of the bag reflects the lived experience of the person who carries it, creating a slow and silent dialogue between design and daily life.
From Object to Ecosystem
The success of the shopping bag series has prompted Studio N&MS to think more broadly about the ecosystem surrounding the objects they create. While the bags themselves remain central, the studio has started exploring adjacent formats that can carry similar values and visual energy—postcards, notebooks, posters, even wearable pieces beyond bags.
These extensions are not simply products. They are manifestations of the same design spirit: accessible, joyful, layered with meaning, and carefully made. For instance, a small poster series carries lines related to those found on the bags, but reimagined with shifting typography and layout that speaks to wall-based communication. A run of notebooks includes silent messages hidden in the inner covers, turning writing into a conversation with the object.
This expansion is not about branding or product lines. It’s about scale and resonance. If the bag works as a personal interface between design and the world, what other objects might serve a similar function? What happens when multiple items speak to each other visually or conceptually across time?
In thinking about these questions, the studio maintains a clear boundary: each item must have a reason to exist. It must contribute something different, not dilute the impact of the bag. The result is a slow-building ecosystem of objects that carry a shared tone but offer distinct experiences.
Reclaiming the Commons
An unspoken achievement of the bag series is how it quietly reclaims public space as a site of creativity. In many cities, visual space is dominated by commercial messaging. Billboards, posters, branded apparel, packaging, and store signage compete endlessly for attention. Studio N&MS subverts this by inserting something visually compelling into that environment—something that isn’t trying to sell a product or push an agenda.
Their bags reintroduce visual generosity into the commons. A bright bag with the words “Keep Looking” might pass you on a bike. A line like “Here Before You” may emerge from under a coat in a coffee shop. These encounters are small and brief, but they matter. They remind us that design can surprise us in gentle ways.
The designers understand that these moments don’t need to be dramatic to be meaningful. They believe that public space should include visual elements that aren’t weaponized for commerce. Their approach is one of contribution, not intrusion.
By creating pieces that are functional yet expressive, the studio encourages a shift in how people see their role in the city. The person carrying the bag becomes a kind of cultural participant, not just consuming design, but sharing it. This shift repositions everyday citizens as visual agents in the public sphere.
Future Visions and Cultural Adaptation
As the bag series gains more visibility across cities and communities, questions naturally arise about how it might adapt to different cultural contexts. So far, the project has largely centered around phrases in English and aesthetics suited to Central European and international urban environments. But the studio has already begun exploring how the concept could be localized.
Nam and Mark are open to translating the message, not just linguistically, but tonally. Direct translations often fail to carry emotional nuance, so the challenge lies in adapting sentiment across cultures without losing what makes the bags compelling. This might mean collaborating with writers or designers native to a region, or developing entirely new lines that carry the same tone of playful thoughtfulness in other languages.
Cultural adaptation isn’t limited to language. It also extends to color psychology, material preferences, reading conventions, and urban rhythms. What feels joyful or expressive in one context may seem overly loud or ambiguous in another. The team is aware of this complexity and treats each possible expansion with care and research.
These global considerations speak to the project’s strength. Its foundation—an everyday object made poetic—is universal. But the execution remains sensitive to where and how that object will live.
Learning Through Limitation
A recurring theme in the evolution of the Studio N&MS bag series is how limitation can drive creativity. The format is small, the object simple. A rectangle of fabric with handles, a line of text, and a set of colors. Within these constraints, Nam Huynh and Mark Bohle have created an expansive design language that continues to grow without repetition.
Rather than seeing the bag as a restriction, the designers use its limitations to refine their ideas. Each decision—about letter spacing, color pairing, or phrase structure—is magnified by the simplicity of the format. There’s no place to hide poor thinking. The bag demands clarity, coherence, and impact in a compact form.
This clarity has become one of the project’s quiet strengths. In a design culture that often leans toward complexity, maximalism, or high-tech solutions, the bags offer a counterpoint: small-scale, emotionally intelligent work that doesn’t scream to be noticed, yet leaves a lasting impression.
The result is not minimalism for its own sake, but intention at every level. A kind of quiet rigour behind the joy.
Studio N&MS and the Power of Shared Authorship
At its heart, the success of the bag series lies in the unique dynamic between Nam Huynh and Mark Bohle. Their collaboration is not hierarchical or siloed. Instead, it’s based on continuous dialogue, shared intuition, and mutual critique. Each bag is the result of back-and-forth—of building and undoing, proposing and refining, trusting and challenging.
They bring complementary strengths: Nam’s deep typographic fluency and structural thinking balance Mark’s flair for gesture, storytelling, and emotional tone. But their process blurs these roles. Both contribute to every stage of the work, from initial sketches to final production. That shared authorship is felt in the coherence of the designs—each bag reads like a true conversation.
More than just co-creators, they operate as editors for each other. No phrase is printed without shared confidence. No color is chosen without testing. This discipline allows them to keep the tone consistent across editions, even as the content evolves.
It’s a rare kind of partnership—rigorous but generous, full of humor and precision. And it's this relationship, as much as the bags themselves, that defines the soul of the project.
Final Thoughts
In a world saturated with overdesigned objects and commercial messaging, the shopping bag series by Studio N&MS emerges as a refreshing counterpoint—an invitation to slow down, look closer, and rediscover delight in the everyday. Through a modest format and restrained materials, Nam Huynh and Mark Bohle have built something quietly radical: design that doesn’t demand attention, but earns it.
What makes this project resonate isn’t just its clean typography, surprising color choices, or wry textual tone. It’s the careful alignment between concept and execution, between idea and object. The bags are proof that when designers treat utility as a canvas, rather than a constraint, the results can touch a wide spectrum of people in meaningful ways.
This series is not about consumerism or trend—it’s about expression. It’s about how a single phrase can transform an object from a tool to a message. How a small design gesture, handled with care, can become part of someone’s daily ritual. Studio N&MS understands that design is most powerful when it enters lives gently, with humor, intelligence, and openness.
What started as an experiment has become a conversation between people, spaces, and objects. The bags live in transit—folded, carried, worn—and that very movement is part of their story. With each new edition, Nam and Mark reaffirm their belief that design, at its best, is a quiet kind of generosity. One that meets you where you are, asks nothing, and yet stays with you long after.