Rebranding Kinnarps, one of Europes finest furniture brands.

In the end of 2015 Kinnarps, one of Europes finest office interior and furniture brands approached me to discuss a rebranding project. This became the start of a brand new love affair.Kinnarps was founded in Sweden, more than 75 years ago, in 1942 by Jarl and Evy Andersson. To this day it is a 100% family owned enterprise. This beautiful interior design brand provides interior workspace solutions for offices and public environments. High quality and low environmental impact mark the entire value chain - from raw material to finished solutions for the workspace. Kinnarps is currently one of Europe's largest provider of workspace interior solutions. Sales operations are conducted in about 40 countries.

The challenge.

Develop a new brand strategy, creative guidelines and implement them.

The challenge that Kinnarps approached me with was the following: Kinnarps had been working first with one of Europes leading brand consultants for about two years and that project ended up in the drain. Following that project they worked with one of Swedens top design agencies and that project too ended up not being completed. The problem with both earlier consultants had been that they didn't fully understand the industry Kinnarps provides services within and they didn't truly understand how the architect and interior design industry worked either. Today in Sweden, as well as in many parts of the world, the buying decision isn't taken by the actual buyer anymore. Instead it's the architects and the interior designers who has the final say in what large clients should buy for their offices, schools and care facilities. This means you have to work differently with your product development, your marketing, your organisation, sales and ultimately your branding. Besides working with branding you might know that I'm also an entrepreneur.One of the companies I've founded, BAUX, is active in the interior design and building industry. My experience from BAUX has given me tons of learnings. I've also been consulting for other leading brands in the interior design industry. This has given me unique insights and knowledge on how to work with branding and product development in the industry where Kinnarps is active. This was something Kinnarps sensed and after some discussions I was given the assignment to rebrand Kinnarps, develop new creative guidelines and then 'creative direct' and lead the execution on the new brand strategy and graphical guidelines.After some discussions back and fourth, In January 2016 I was awarded the project to rebrand Kinnarps including graphical guidelines, implementation, creative direction and more. This was the start of a great collaboration between me, my team and the great people at Kinnarps.The project and my deliveries.

• A new brand strategy.
• New creative guidelines for all global communication activities.
• New design and graphical guidelines.
• A new visual strategy including developing of photos and videos.
• Interior decoration strategy.
• Copy tonality.
• A new digital strategy and design guidelines.
• Social media strategy.
• Event and space strategy and implementation.
• A selection of communication activities to create clear guidelines for future campaigns and activities.

The new brand platform

Getting the entire organisation onboard the new strategy.

Executing on the new brand plattform.Creative Direction and the creative platform.A new color palette.Typography that works in a digital world.Executing on the new creative platform.A world class digital experience.

Creating a world class experience as the Stockholm Furniture & Light fair in Sweden.As part of my assignment to strategically and creatively rebrand Kinnarps, I was also given the assignment to design the Kinnarps Stand at the 2017 and 2018 Stockholm Furniture Light & Design fair in Stockholm, Sweden. This fair is one of the most important interior design fairs in the world and being held in Sweden it's obviously a key event for Kinnarps.Editors Award in 2018.I've blogged about the event before, so for a longer read, please head there. The event was a true success. I developed a concept that Kinnarps bought into. I then brought architects Förstberg & Ling into the process and during the summer of 2016, together we developed the concept further into a final plan that was presented to Kinnarps in August 2016. Tons of work, led on my side by my trusted project manager Caroline Karlström and the team at Kinnarps led by first Erika Lundgren and then also Åsa Karlsson, we could celebrate a great final result. The 2018 stand was awarded Editors Award by the worlds leading Architect and Interior Design magazines. Read about the project here.

The 2018 standFollowing the success of 2017 I was once again choosen by Kinnarps to design their stand. This year I wanted to create something that resembled the 2018 structure, but I wanted to open up the stand more. A reflection of an ongoing conceptual discussion we had at the moment to be more transparent, more open and more cooperative with Kinnarps clients and even competitors. I named the concept 'Kinnarps Open for Business'. After presenting initial ideas I brought Industrial designers Visual ID into the process. Together with them we finalised a structure that reflected the 'Open for business' concept. After initial presentation, me and the team at ROST finetuned all details, colors, product presentations etc to make sure the experience became world class. The final result was celebrated by both Kinnarps, their employees and customers. Our open structure was inviting and in the end visitor numbers were up a lot compared to previous years.

Stairs inspired by Falköping Central StationWhen we were working on the final designs of the stand we had one corner where we had decided that Kinnarps were to host PR events. For this corner we discussed everything from benches, coffee tables or some sort of stand. On one of my trips to Kinnarps HQ, just outside Falköping, I found myself staring on a flight of stairs just outside the central station in Falköping. I took a couple of photos of it and also roughly measured it. Then back home I decided to recreate those stairs and see how it would fit in the stand. Perfect! That's how an idea can come about some times.

Developing a brand new visual tonalityWhen you rebrand a company, one of the most important parts is content. Text, photos and film. For Kinnarps, being a product driven brand, updating the content was one of the most important parts of the project. Once we had delivered the brand strategy and the new brand platform. Deciding on typography, color palettes, written and a visual tonality was key. Early on I presented five categories that were to steer how and why content was produced. The highest level was called Hero content. Reserved for the products that was driving the brand forward. We then developed a new tonality for all products. To put the products into an emotional environment we had the Renderings category. Together with one of Europes premier 3D agencies, Industriromantik in Gothenburg, I created a large series drawings that Industriromantik helped me bring to life. For real environment photos, we created the Case category. This was reserved for cases that either portrayed brands that positioned Kinnarps the way we wanted or cases where Kinnarps products we're perfectly used. Finally the category Kinnarps was created to build trust for the Kinnarps organisation.

By creating new beautiful environments we could project how Kinnarps should be used rather than showing how it had been used historically.

I created a large series of environments to support a future brand image rather than one based on history. Here's some of them.

A social media presence worthy of Kinnarps.The things you need in any company.Aligning all print activities with the new brand guidelines.Making video our best friend.

Kinnarps Next Education® - School Founder and Designer from Kinnarps - Workspace Solutions on Vimeo.Piloting the brand by creating campaigns for KinnarpsMarketing activation process.Finally ongoing creative direction.To sum up.It's