BRAND · PICKGUARDS

HOODOO

Guitar pickguards worth a museum label.

Year: 2026
Role: Co-founder — brand system, product direction, label police

The INFLECTION pickguard hung like a museum piece, with its label: IDX 012, “The dark band changes direction around an open centre.”

Design principle

Idea in. Object out.

16 DESIGNS / 4 FAMILIES / 1 LABEL

Context

Every electric guitar wears a pickguard, and almost every pickguard is a plain sheet of plastic whose only job is to take the scratches.

Approach

Treat each one like a piece in a gallery: a number, a name and one sentence that has to argue for the design. If the sentence won’t come, the design doesn’t go in. A small permanent collection that never changes, and exhibitions that each bring their own rules.

Outcome

Sixteen designs in four families — Strata, Currents, Counterforms and Folds — with 160 product scenes, cutting templates and a box to arrive in. Next up: making the first ones for real.

THE DETAIL

A fault worth keeping.

Dark layers, a pale split, a thread of red. This close-up render of FAULT makes the design the subject, before it becomes part of an instrument.

A close-up of the FAULT pickguard: dark layers split by a pale fissure. — FAULT, UP CLOSE

THE COLLECTION

One part. A different instrument.

Four guitars show how much a single surface can change. Across sixteen designs, Strata, Currents, Counterforms and Folds give the collection four distinct visual languages.

Four guitars in a grid, each wearing a different Hoodoo pickguard. — FOUR GUITARS, FOUR ARGUMENTS

THE ARRIVAL

The box belongs to the object.

SURGE in its proposed packaging. The label, the product scene and the box carry the same gallery logic. These are product renders; making the first physical pieces comes next.

The SURGE pickguard, marbled cream, black and red, lying in its open box. — SURGE, IN ITS BOX

Project status

Not in the shops yet, and the brand book is internal, so there is nothing to click. For now.