The year of chaos, cake and creative catharsis
As the festive fog settles and we collectively forget what day it is, we thought we’d pop in with a little year-in-review.
A 2025 Pistachio wrap-up, if you will. (Don’t sure us Spotify, ok?).
You see, while the world may have been juggling AI anxiety, sadvertising meltdowns and dangerously early Christmas campaigns, we’ve been busy doing what we do best:
- Making brands look brilliant.
- Launching podcasts in squeaky chairs.
- Celebrating 20 friggin’ years in business!!
- Raising loadsa money for BTR
Let’s rewind.
We turned 20 (and yes, we made a fuss about it)
2025 marked two whole decades of Pistachio. That’s 20 years of creative graft, bold thinking, dodgy fonts, and genuinely brilliant work. Naturally, we celebrated in style – think birthday campaigns, avatar glow-ups, cakes, and a desire to do things even better than before.
We even made our own LinkedIn banners to mark the occasion. Peak fame or what?
For a lil’ trip down memory lane, check this out.
🎗 We raised money for a cause close to our hearts
This year, we went big with our fundraising efforts for Brain Tumour Research, and will continue to do so long into 2026. It’s a cause rooted in our team’s personal history and one we’re incredibly passionate about.
We set ourselves a mighty target of raising £10,000, and the team wasted no time jumping into action (and, in some cases, into running trainers). Yes, we still have a long way to go, but you best believe we’ll be leveraging the best of our creativity and community to shine a spotlight on the cause for the next 12 months, too.
We shared stats that shocked us (less than 1% of the national spend on cancer research is allocated to brain tumours), paid tribute to the dearly missed and inspirational Dave, (more on our hero here) and rallied support through campaigns with heart (and a lot of humour).
And it’s not just about raising money either. It was about awareness, storytelling, and turning our creative energy into something meaningful. So, to everyone who donated in 2025, cheered us on, or reshared our many, many fundraising links: thank you. We hope to see you back by our side in 2026!
🎧 We launched a podcast: Nuts About Design (NAD)
Because clearly we weren’t busy enough, we also launched a podcast this year. IKR.
It’s called, Nuts About Design (yes, NAD) and is our audio love letter to the creative industry. Hosted by our very own Marie Holden, each episode features real talk from the Pistachio team on everything from working on our own rebrand, staying ahead of the animation game, working with copywriters, navigating AI, getting the brief right, and much, much more.
It’s equal parts wisdom and wilful creative silliness. And we’re kind of obsessed with it.
Catch up on some of our latest episodes here.
Killer Creative came back for Volume 3
This Halloween, we dropped the biggest and boldest instalment of our spoof horror franchise yet: Killer Creative 3: The Brief Awakens. This time, the misunderstood villain became the anti-hero (shout at TS for making the AH’s cool again), teaming up with the Pistachios to take on a much greater evil: the bland brief.
We went full franchise on this one: script, teaser posters, character cards, even an outtakes reel. And yes, we are expecting a clean sweep come awards season.
Watch every instalment via our YouTube channel.
Then we hit full festive create chaos
Obvs, we wrapped up the year with our annual deep dive into the best Christmas ads – shout out to Kevin the Carrot, a Pistachio fave since 2016 – and launched our own seasonal campaign:
Sleigh What!?
A digital advent calendar full of team facts, festive trivia, BTR donation days, and a clue-based competition to guess a mystery Christmas song. No chocolate (*sobs*), just creative chaos.
Congrats if you cracked the mystery song title – winner announcement is loading for 2026 😉
The team also channelled their inner Tomy Shelby at our Christmas party shenanigans at the National Justice Museum in Notts, where murder mystery, style, and more than a few bevvies were the dish du noir.
Check out some fab pics from the night here.
Also, we wrote stuff. A lot of it.
2025 was once again a year to flex our blog-writing creds. We know you love it. And, you guessed it, no topic was too niche.
We covered:
- Sadvertising (and why it works on us every time)
- Our official ranking of fonts based on vibe
- Why AI can’t save your boring campaign
- How to switch off on holiday (seriously)
- The power of words
You can read them all on our Ramblings page. Preferably while eating something dusted in sugar.
Wrapping it all up (with a big shiny bow)
We’d like to say a huge thanks to our clients, collaborators and extended Pistachio pals for being part of a year full of creative madness, meaningful work and genuinely good vibes. If you’re planning a rebrand, campaign or content explosion in 2026 – you know where to find us.
Until then, we’ll be napping under the desk and pretending a Quality Street can count as a vegetable.