Founder Petrus Palmér describes how the new identity, designed by London-based branding agency Made Thought, is a representation of the design brand’s commitment to innovation.
— The expressive colour palette reflects our style and playful tone, while also marking the significant growth and the vibrant position we’ve earned across the world of contemporary design. The new typeface, Hem Sans, by leading Swedish typographer Göran Söderström of Letters from Sweden, continues this evolution. It’s a re-imagining of a Geometric Sans Serif, with unexpected shapes such as sharp corners on certain letters and square punctuation and long, curved tails on the lowercase ”y” and ”t”. It also pays respect to the rich history of geometry that exists within architecture and interior design, he says.
In order to create the new brand identity, Made Thought immersed themselves in the world of Hem, spending time with the team at the Stockholm HQ. The result retained the playful creativity of Hem’s existing brand.
— It [the brand] offers imagination and creativity in abundance alongside their obsession with quality and detail. We wanted to create an identity that stood apart from the more expected visual codes of control and precision and instead focus on expressing their personality and character, to create a visual language that was engaging, personable, and unexpected, says Garett Duncan from Made Thought, who worked on the new identity.
As part of the identity, Made Thought has extracted a series of core shapes that will make up an essential element of the new branding. These shapes have been taken from 3D models of Hem products, such as the Alphabeta Pendant Light and the Last Stool, which have been manipulated to create flat, graphic shapes that will be used to represent key product categories across packaging and promotional materials.
This fall also marks Hem’s first collaboration with renowned British designer Faye Toogood for the launch of Puffy Lounge Chair.
— She’s someone we’ve been wanting to work with for a long time, says Petrus Palmér. The lounge chair is the first introduction of our Puffy Seating Collection, which will encompass a range of chair and stool products, offering a tactile new take on the enduring concept of steel-framed furniture. It combines the clinical lines of modernist furniture with a deep, satisfying sense of comfort. The tubular frame peeks out from beneath a detachable upholstery of soft, quilted fabric that sits atop a canvas sling for support. The overall feeling is one of being enveloped in a plumply padded duvet.
The Kumo Sofa is Hem’s most modular sofa system, designed by Norwegian duo Anderssen & Voll back in 2018. This fall, the family is completed with the additions of a corner sofa, ottoman, and a lounge chair.
— It’s built around an innovative metal frame onto which individual cushion components are added. This intelligent design from Anderssen & Voll makes it especially convenient to live with—readily reconfigurable whenever and however you wish. It’s also efficient and responsible to ship thanks to the same quality — it dismantles easily. Like its namesake — Kumo means ”cloud” in Japanese — it’s light and soft as well as clever, with generous, foam-filled cushions covered in a luxurious, highly textured woolen fabric as a final flourish, says Palmér.
