The label was not the point. The paper was the point.
Hjem & Hav came to us with a question that sounded like a problem: their packaging cost three times what their competitors paid, and they could not figure out how to bring it down without losing what made the brand feel like itself. Could we redesign the packaging? Could we, gently, make it cheaper?
We made it more expensive. Then we explained why, and they agreed.
The three trips
Before we drew anything we visited three paper mills, in three different parts of the country, over five weeks. The first trip was about education — we needed to understand, in physical terms, what the brand's existing paper actually was. The second was about alternatives. The third was the choice.
We came back with a single paper. Uncoated, slightly warm, with a fiber that catches ink in a way that makes black look like a quiet kind of black, not a hard one. It is not the cheapest paper they could use. It is, however, the paper that lets the rest of the brand do almost no work.
The substrate is the loudest design choice in any printed system. It is also, almost always, the one designers spend the least time on.
What changed after
Once the paper was decided, the rest of the system fell into place in about three weeks:
- The mark became smaller. The paper carries enough character that a large mark would have been competing.
- Color use narrowed to two — a deep teal and a single warm white. We tried to introduce a third, twice, and removed it both times.
- Typography became almost invisible. Information sets in a small mono, set in a single column, in a corner of the label. The paper is the foreground.
The packaging now costs roughly four times the industry baseline. The brand sells at twice the price of its closest competitor, and sells out, every week, at the only three fishmongers in Stockholm that carry it.
We did not save them money. We helped them charge more. See the project page →