Helly Hansen is a Norwegian outdoor clothing brand and developer of modern hydrophilic and microporous material technologies with a history dating back to 1877. Stockholm Design Lab was responsible for developing a new ‘innovative and sustainable’ packaging solution for Helly Hansen’s new Warm, Dry, Wool and One thermal underwear range that would attract from a distance, help customers choose the right base-layer product, drives sales and would be easy to handle for both sales staff and customers.
SDL’s design solution is a smart and communicative union of shape, colour, infographic and typesetting intelligently split between a very clean front and a controlled complexity on the reverse.
Apart from the distinctive HH monogram of the Helly Hansen brand, the hatch delivers the strongest design cue from a distance. Its clear industrial sensibility and familiar geometric form deliver a powerful and understandable resolution of the product’s hardwearing and utilitarian functionality (also reflected through a straightforward sleeve and tray structural design) and the aspirations of a consumer seeking (or perhaps imagining) hazardous adventures through harsh environments. Executed as a bright, single colour fill set against a fresh outdoor white the front panel establishes a clear long distance distinction between product variations while appropriately reflecting the clothing’s basic base-layer nature.
The simplicity of the front gives way to a contrasting complexity of the reverse, the combination of diagram, infographic, grid-based layout and small type size deliver a technical manual-like sensibility that works really well to communicate innovation, detail, quality, effectiveness and the brand’s expansive material knowledge. Both front and back share a contemporary and neutral uppercase sans serif type choice which features a nice mix of weights, a cool grey and black colour palett and a combination of straightforward and specialist language choices that balances the practical with the technological.
Opinion by Richard Baird – Twitter @richbaird
