m⁵ architects is a young, Helsinki-based architectural practice with works ranging from furniture to urban planning. They have a wide experience and expertise in Building Information Modeling (BIM).

m⁵ architects are specialized in so-called five-dimensional planning, which means integrating traditional architectural 3D modeling with two other layers of variables (such as construction time and building costs). m⁵ architects asked Werklig to create an identity based on 5D concept. The identity needed to be extremely simple, usable and timeless – with the "5D" element visible.

Solutions
1. Logo

m⁵ logo is the key building block of m⁵ identity, the primary visual element that identifies the company. The logo is simple, but it has a subtle hidden message in it: a common square meter symbol (m²) has been flipped, thus creating a symbol for the five-dimensional approach of m⁵ architects.

"Hidden" visual pun in the m⁵ logo




Both English and Finnish logo versions were created

2. Colors

Corporate colors were picked from m⁵ architects' new premises interior. Strong vibrant orange, grays and white color were used to create a versatile palette.

m⁵ interiors were used as the basis of corporate color palette



m⁵ color palette

3. Typography

The final touch to the overall feel was made with typographical choices. m⁵ uses FF DIN as a corporate typeface. FF DIN is a robust and very legible typeface, with a technical/architectural twist. Using DIN is also a small cultural hint towards Germany–both M5 main designers have solid German roots, so what would be more suitable typeface for them? 

“DIN, an acronym for the German Deutsches Institut für Normung (German Institute for Standardization) [– –]. The earliest version of a DIN typeface was released by the D Stempel AG foundry in 1923. In 1936 the German Standard Committee selected DIN 1451 as the standard typeface for use in the areas of engineering, technology, traffic, administration and business.” (Source: FontFont)

 

Application examples

 
Business cards, set with DIN

m⁵ website (beta, under construction)

Johan Aarnio is a rapidly evolving construction company. It started as a one-man company carrying out private renovations but uncompromising work and top-notch quality has yielded them more and more work. 

Currently, Johan Aarnio is creating ever more complex and bigger projects without sacrificing the attained level of quality. Moreover, this passion has lead them being the chosen company by many architects, corporations and demanding individuals. They sincerely want to be the best in their field, nothing less.  

Johan Aarnio's crown jewel is their carpenter workshop designing and manufacturing everything from custom made furnitures to kitchens and everything in between.  

Brief

Johan Aarnio approached Werklig with a demanding brand task: how to brand a construction company with a distinctive edge and make their brand promise evident and easy to understand. Company is bilingual, working every day with Swedish and Finnish speaking customers. 

Sketches from early meetings.


Solution

Their brand promise was crystallized in two words in Swedish "Hemma bäst" which, idiomatically, are not easily translated to English but loosely translate as "best at home". Swedish was chosen because, historically, Swedish speaking minority has always been better off in Finland but the actual phrase is common enough to be understood by Finnish speaking natives as well. 

The Slogan


Applications

Brand materials were designed to make employees proud of their brand and position Johan Aarnio apart from their competitors. In order to do so, graphic elements were stripped down to a bare minimum. Primary colors black and white were chosen to demonstrate the simple quality-driven attitude towards all the projects Johan Aarnio is carrying out. For corporate typography Helvetica was chosen for its simple and timeless character. 

Business cards.

Brochure. 

 

Tonttu™ (elf) is a wireless remote controlled janitor, who takes care of your cabin (or house) 24 hours a day - all year, around the globe. It takes care of the heating management and keeps the energy consumption reasonable.

There Corporation contacted Luxus and Werklig past spring to create a marketing platform for their home energy management system service. They wanted us to brand their service. 

Technical excellence was already put in place by There. Service is really easy-to use and functions as it should be. So we dug deep to find what were the most appreciated key benefits for pilot users. It turned out that users really liked they were not to be forced to call somebody living near their home or cabin to check out to see if everything is ok. Instead they could see it easily online by themselves. Just like there was somebody taking care of their cabin already.

To build an image of a trustworthy, magical janitor of your home (or home away from home) when you're away, we came up with a concept of an elf, or Tonttu in Finnish. It is crafty embodiment of the service highlighting the key benefit of it.  

Tonttu is a service provided by There Corporation.

 

Aalto University's Design Contest for The Memorial Builders of The Future

Aalto University and the Association of Professional Graphic Designers in Finland Grafia and the Finnish Association of Designers Ornamo are cooperatively organising a design contest for a memorial to the donors who provided funds for the University’s endowment capital. The contest is open to Aalto students, staff members and alumni. 

The visual identity for the contest was designed at Werklig to fit under the visual identity of Aalto University, however also standing out as an own entity. The visual theme of the contest is built using Aalto University's brand colours combined with a caleidoscopic treatment of the basic geometric forms, which are also essential in the University's identity. This results in a fresh, yet very "Aalto", set of illustrations that are used throughout the applications of the identity. The silver finish was chosen to add a touch glamour.

Caleidoscopic illustration for the identity. 

Each language version has it's own "caleidoscope".

Example of a spread.

Voimaosakeyhtiö SF is the majority owner of power company Fennovoima. The line of business is to deliver energy to companies producing, transmitting and delivering electricity and other forms of energy. Voimaoskaeyhtiö SF consists of 69 companies. 

Werklig designed the visual identity for Voimaosakeyhtiö SF including the logo, stationary, web pages and a brand identity guidelines.

The generalized symbol for energy is the symbol of lightning. Being an energy delivering company it was intentional to have the appearance of electricity and energy as a visible element in the identity. We set the task to have the visual symbol present without emphasizing it too strongly in the logo itself. The solution was leaving the logotype simple yet recognizable placing a supporting lightning element in the backround.

 

Voimaoskeyhtiö SF's new logotype.  

 

Apart from the logo a visual element resembling a lightning and energy stream was created. The visual feature divides the surface diagonally from lower left corner to the upper right corner. The splitter in the center is always 1/20 from the height of the surface. 

Sections from the identity guidelines.

Sisustusarkkitehdit Fyra (Interior Architects Fyra) is a vibrant interior architecture and design company, run by four ladies ("fyra" is a Swedish word for "four", hence the name). The company was founded in 2010 and it's visual identity has been designed by Werklig.

Fyra's visual identity can be summarized with a couple keywords: colourful and fresh. As most of interior architecture offices tend to be more or less informal (with subtle and harmonic colour palette) Fyra decided to follow a different path. For Fyra people colour is a state of mind, not just a visual gimmick. All company items display this colourfullnes, ranging from business cards and website to presentations. Chosen palette of four colours suppors the "four" ideology. The same theme can be seen also in Fyra logo, which has an integrated "4" acting as letter "A".

You may find more about Fyra on their website (so far only in Finnish).
More about Fyra
More about Fyra visual identity
Fyra on Facebook

 

Fyra logotype.





Business cards, white letterpress print on heavy stock colour paper. 

 

Office lobby with unique lighting fixture, designed naturally by Fyra

Fyra website front page. Front page uses changing visuals: more will be added later.

"The café Ihana Kahvila provides an unusual setting for coffee, refreshments and shopping inside a converted freight container at Helsinki’s newest artisanal hub, Kalasatama." (source: Helsinki Times) 

One of the summer's cafe highlights has been Ihana Kahvila (loosely translated as "The Lovely Café"), a small café and a shop ran by Ms. Sanni Jouhki. It operates in Kalasatama, which is basically a no-man's-land at the moment, filled with piles of land, old containers, graffiti fences and other urban spots. This fascinating piece of land—previously a harbor—will become a residential area for estimated 17000 people in a couple of years.

Kalasatama area from above. Ihana Café's spot is on the upper left point of that masssive pier (picture © Suomen Ilmakuva Oy).

Last spring Werklig was asked to help building some identity material for the café. Naturally we said "yes".

The task was to create something "designed" as a contrast to the rugged surroundings. It was clear that we wanted to keep the freight container element somehow present in the identity. Originally the café's (concept) name was "Konttikahvila" (Container Café) so that also lead the design to a certain direction. After vigorous thinking we managed to narrow down the visual main elements into a few.

A typical freight container.




"Sortti" bag.


The shape and surface of freight container was taken as a basis for the design. Corrugated metal surface with geometrical angles seemed to be something that really captured the "essence" of a container. Also, cafe´s seating system was to be built with Sortti cube bags (they are basically heavy duty bags for industrial use) and cubes are definately geometric, too. However, we needed to tweak the elements so the final result would be indeed lovely (Ihana), not of just a boring pile of geometric container stuff. Luckily Ms. Asli Ufacik, who had made the interior design for the cafe, had planned to use some floral wallpaper inside the container. We decided to use that idea also for the identity. Why use an existing wallpaper when you can make your own?

Original plan was to use Ritva Kronlund's wallpaper in the container walls so that was used as a starting point for Ihana Kahvila's own wallpaper. The primary design drivers (freight containers, corrugated surfaces, Sortti cubes, overall industrial feel, geometrical shapes) were combined with given floral themes and voilà: Ihana Kahvila's own unique wallpaper was born. The wallpaper has only technical, geometric and "cold" shapes and forms but the final result is very traditional, warm and even feminine. When seen from a far the wallpaper actually looks like a basic floral wallpaper. And that was something we tried to do. Easter eggs are always fun.

The colors used in the new wallpaper were an hommage to Kronlund's original design, but soon three alternative color themes were created. The cafe interior has been covered with a blue version of the wallpaper. Original color theme is used on the website and on flyers. Other two colors are used in trays and other smaller itemms in the café.




Ihana Kahvila wallpaper.




Ihana Kahvila wallpaper color variations.

Wallpapers inside the café. (picture © Ihana Kahvila and Tiina Närkki)


Usually a logo is made before any additional identity elements, but in this case the design process was totally reversed. As the wallpaper/pattern became such a dominant element we decided to do all the other identity elements based on it. Typography follows the industrial-meets-floral -theme, too. A sans-serif typeface (like in container markings) is spiced by a ornamental slab serif typeface.

Naturally a website was designed, too. Please take a look at the site and don't forget to follow Ihana Kahvila's Facebook feed. There has been a lot of articles and blog posts about the café so it may be a good idea to simply google a bit, too.

Ihana Kahvila logo.




Ihana Kahvila website. Design by Werklig, coding by Client.

 

 

Ihana Kahvila application concepts.

The opening hours seem to change according to weather conditions—check the latest info from Facebook page and go check the place out! I'd say it's worth twe walk or biking.

 

Finally, some good mood pics, all courtesy of Ihana Kahvila.




Sortti bags in action.








Good stuff!

Grafia, the Association of Professional Graphic Designers in Finland, conferred the title of the Graphic Designer of the Year 2011 on Agent Pekka. This inspired the Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux, design agency Werklig, Agent Pekka and designer Lauri Johansson to join forces and take Pekka's illustrators on tour around Europe.  

The exhibition brings forth ten of the top international illustrators from Agent Pekka's team: Lotta Nieminen, Inka Järvinen, Sanna Mander, Rami Niemi, Janine Rewell, Pietari Posti, Minni Havas, Sac Magique, Ville Savimaa and Antti Uotila.

The exhibition is organized by the Finnish Cultural Institute in Bruxelles, Grafia and will allso be a part of Helsinki Design Capital 2012.

The works will be travelling and displayed in specially designed boxes, by Lauri Johansson. The opening ceremony will take place 30.9.2011 in Recyclart in Bruxelles, part of the Design September event. The end destination for the tour is hopefully Helsinki Design Week 2012.

Werklig is in charge of the whole exhibition identity. A bigger ensemble of the identity will be added to our site closer to the opening ceremony. 'Til then, you can check out the exhibition site here www.pekkafinland.fi/pof  

 

Greenlux is a Finnish company designing and manufacturing LED luminaires for business and public entities. Werklig was given the privilege to redesign their visual brand identity. 

It was evident that being a green company, promoting sustainability and cost savings, Greenlux's brand identity should also convey these messages. The actual visual design drivers were found from the technical characteristics of Greenlux's products.  

The new visual identity of Greenlux embodies the benefits of their LED systems and company's core existence, conveying the message of great lighting with improved endurance and while saving energy. 

The new Greenlux-logo. 

Visual Identity Guidelines were created to instruct the use of all the visual elements and ensuring consistent use of all brand communication materials. 

Shipping Guru, an expert in shipbroking and sea logistics, recieved his crispy new businesscards with a new "guru" company logo.