Our latest campaign shoot for LOJEL features &#8220;Semo&#8221;, their exciting new collection of carry essentials—including backpacks, totes, laptop sleeves, and tech organizers. This campaign brought us to the vibrant city of Stockholm—which is also home to <a href="https://portal.studiofaculty.com/work/lojel-stories-jj-studios/">Johanna and Jacob (J+J Studios)</a>, the talented designers behind the Semo collection.
This two day shoot called for extensive planning, location scouting and talent sourcing—all with a short time frame to bring all components together. The Semo collection continues LOJEL&#8217;s aim to evolve beyond a luggage brand and provide modern and sustainable carry solutions that seamlessly integrate into the dynamic lives of everyday commuters. The city of Stockholm effortlessly reflected these same values, known for being design-forward with a vibrant city life.
In addition to the Semo collection, our shoot also captured new colour ways for LOJEL&#8217;s Cubo luggage in Burnt Sienna and Linen. To embed these colours into the city, we leveraged the linen/off-white tones of traditional Swedish interiors and featured the Burnt Sienna Cubo at Rådhuset Metro station, a unique station planned by architect Michael Granit and designed by the artist Sigvard Olsson.
One of the standout moments of this trip was reconnecting with our long time friend and talented director, Rosanna Peng. Over hotel breakfast and cozy meatball dinners, we reminisced about our first collaboration over 11 years ago—a passion project called the Commute App. Seeing how far she’s come since then filled us with pride and inspiration.
Photo shoots like this one always leave a lasting impression on our creative process. This time, we were reminded of the incredible power of collaboration. With around a dozen creative minds on set, we witnessed a beautiful synergy as each individual brought their passion and expertise to life. It’s moments like these that fuel our work and remind us why we love what we do.

Services

Location

Credits

Art Direction

LOJEL, Semo Campaign — Stockholm

This summer, we were reconnected with Tokuhiko Kise, founder of <a href="https://www.truck-furniture.co.jp/">TRUCK Furniture</a> in Osaka, Japan. Tok has always been an inspiration to us, ever since our friend Justin Chung had featured him in the first volume of <a href="https://www.studiofaculty.com/work/faculty-department-vol-1">Faculty Department</a>. In 2014, we visited Japan as an inspiration trip and it was on this trip that we met Tok for the first time. Seeing the TRUCK showroom and having coffee at Bird in many ways inspired us to eventually open our retail store, SORT. From Making Truck to TRUCK Nest, Tok’s books have been a grounding source that we often come back to whenever we were about to make a bigger business decision.
After making furniture for 30+ years, Tok told us he had reached a turning point both in work and life. He described his desire to live more stripped down and simple—a return to the essential. Like most designers, he too was inspired by Dieter Ram’s ‘Less but better’ philosophy. This was the starting point for his new furniture brand, <a href="https://www.stne.jp/">S.T,N.E.</a> (Same TRUCK, New Engine).
Tok reached out to us to help redesign the S.T,N.E. website and create print material for an exhibition in Tokyo at the beginning of November. One of the main print components we were commissioned to work on was a printed booklet, which later grew into a 200 page book featuring 47 Furniture pieces and 16 essays.

<h2>Design</h2>
With the deadline set for end of October, our team needed to move quickly to ensure we were able to deliver on time. The book would be split in two sections: a catalog of the S.T,N.E. furniture collection, and a set of essays by Tok himself and along with three essays by close friends. Our team first established an overall layout design for the essays and then created a complimentary layout for the catalog. With the support of our good friend <a href="https://www.nodakumiko.com/">Kumiko Noda,</a> we decided to use a grey paper stock for the essays component of the book, while the catalog side would be printed on a warm white stock. This common and simple method allowed readers to easily navigate between the two sections when looking at the spine. We went with a Swiss binding method to allow the book to open completely flat when viewing.
At the start of the design process, S.T,N.E. had already established URW Classico as their brand typeface, mainly used for the wordmark. For the design of the book, our team felt that using a serif would help improve the reading experience and also add a new tone of voice to the brand. We settled on Untitled Serif, designed by Klim Type Foundry. To us, Untitled Serif possessed the right balance as a neutral yet warm and familiar contemporary font. Our selection of Untitled Serif was also made in consideration of how it would look when paired with Hiragino Mincho Pro (ヒラギノ明朝).
One of the main design considerations was for balancing the overall layout of both the Japanese text and English text—particularly when the lengths of the text would be quite different. With a 10 column grid set in place, we created a system to set the Japanese text as 6 columns width, and the English text as 5 columns width when the English text was much longer. This allowed us to set the English text as 2 columns and bring the length of all the text blocks closer together.
Once the book was near complete, our team decided to make a trip to Osaka to do a two-day work session with Tok and his colleague Kosuke Inoue. This short trip proved to be essential in helping us iron out the last decisions on the book cover and index section of the book. With the tight deadline, our team, along with S.T,N.E. also worked on the book during after hours while in Japan, making this book truly a labour of love from all parties involved.

<h3>Printing/Binding</h3>
The S.T,N.E. catalog book was printed by <a href="https://sunm.co.jp/en">SunM Color printers</a> in Kyoto and binding was done by <a href="https://www.s-shiko.co.jp/en/">Shinohara Shiko</a> in Tokyo. We were also very fortunate to have our friend <a href="https://www.nodakumiko.com/">Kumiko Noda</a> on board as our print coordinator in Japan while our team returned back to Vancouver. The final printed book was completed just in time for S.T,N.E.&#8217;s book launch/talk at Daikanyama T-Site in Tokyo, and made available at S.T,N.E.&#8217;s Tokyo exhibition this past November.
In addition to the catalog book, our team also provided design services for the exhibition signage, ads, and print collateral.
Despite the challenges of different timezones, language, and terminology, seeing how this book came together with the efforts of all parties working collaboratively reminded us of just how special these projects can be.
We are also immensely grateful to have had our designer Aily Nishioka on this project providing both design work and translation/communication support.

Purchase the book

Print

Same TRUCK, New Engine — Catalog Book

We were connected with Sha Wang during the fall of 2023. Sha had established her interior design practice, Space 9 for a number of years and quickly gained international recognition for her work. However, Sha felt that the name of the practice was no longer reflective of her work and lacked a strong meaning behind it. Our work with Sha involved the entire process, from discovery to name development, identity design to website design, and finally web development.
&nbsp;
&nbsp;
<h3>Name Development</h3>
As we began the name development process, one common thread we had in mind was to create a name that was reflected the unique qualities of Sha&#8217;s work—a fine balance of international design sensibilities with Asian influences. During our name development process, over 30+ name options were generated and then further filtered to the final selection. Our team came across the Chinese character 氛 (fēn), which when paired with various characters provided the meaning of ambience, atmosphere—a feeling. This name connected well with Sha&#8217;s description of her work—spacial, visual, material considerations all to create a particular feeling within a space. As all of Sha&#8217;s work is custom and tailored to each client, we proposed the addition of the french word &#8220;Atelier&#8221; to pair with fēn—a combination of a European and Chinese word, an &#8220;atmosphere workshop&#8221;.

<h3>Identity Design</h3>
The design for the brand identity focuses on this idea of &#8216;atmosphere&#8217;, exploring the matter of spatiality and the intangible qualities of the in-between space. To reflect this spatial concept, we created a dynamic wordmark that can be spaced out to span the width of the page while also being used as a standalone mark. The wordmark is set in Louize, a typeface that we felt accurately expressed the blend of contemporary and natural qualities in Sha&#8217;s design. The sharpness in the letterforms of Louize also reflect angular qualities in Chinese characters, making the typeface a well balanced display of western and eastern influences in the brand&#8217;s tone of voice.
As part of the identity, we created a monogram seal that can be used interchangeably with the wordmark. The design of the monogram was inspired by both traditional Chinese ink seals as well as western seals. The frame of the seal is sized proportionally to the size of the letter F and E while a grid was also used to establish the alignment and arrangement of the letters within the frame.

<h3>Website Design</h3>
The established brand identity was then translated to the Atelier Fēn website using a 12 column grid layout. A subtle scroll animation was used for the wordmark on the homepage to visualize the dynamic wordmark treatment. The project page includes five content modules which allows Sha and her team to display each project differently with some variation while finding the module that would best suit the content. Brand colours are subtly and playfully used through the site to provided structure and division of space. On each project page, a brand colour can be selected and used as the background colour that appears before the full bleed image fades in at the top. The Atelier Fēn website was built as a headless website, ensuring fast loading time and improved security.

Atelier Fen

Brand Identity, Website Design, Development

2024

Name Development

Identity Design

Website Design