A fourth generation family business, Interior Felt is an international textile manufacturer based in Mississauga, specializing in wool designer felt and felt products to enhance interior spaces. In an effort to connect with the Architecture & Design industry, the Interior Felt team worked with us to better communicate their craftsmanship and service to the world.
Through a comprehensive research & strategy phase, we identified Interior Felt’s core purpose, “Made to Feel”— alluding to the carefully crafted experience of Interior Felt’s services and the natural beauty of felt. Based on this, the new visual identity celebrates that natural beauty, with a distinct photography style that highlights the colour, texture, and pliability of the textile.
The refreshed brand system includes timeless typography, an abstracted felt pattern, and technical key line graphics that reflect the precision and care that Interior Felt provides with its products.
Client
Type
Developer
TEAM
SERVICES
INDUSTRY
GT Super Display Neue Haas Grotesk Display
Digital Chaos
Creative Director — Paddy Harrington Design Director — Paul Kawai Senior Designer & Project Lead — Jessica Leong Designers — Sarah Paul, Emi Takahashi, Deborah Khodanovich, Nicholas Hanlon Copywriting & Editing — Brian Sholis Project Manager — Hannah Vance
The logo and icon feature customized letterforms of GT Super Display typeface by Grilli Type. A beautifully engineered typeface that is high contrast, striking and bold. It feels like an expression of the natural felt form, mirroring the curves, clean cut edges and crisp corners.
PROCESS Field trip with the photography team to the Interior Felt factory.
The system includes Neue Haas Grotesk Display Roman and Medium, a sans serif typeface that reflects the technical precision of the Interior Felt team. Headers can be solid or outlined, serving as a complimentary tool and nod to the technical beauty.
Graphic crops are used to emphasize the technical beauty of felt and the logo, offering a behind the scenes view of the carefully crafted letterforms. The Medium Crop, featured above, starts to abstract the letterforms to make shapes and spaces to work within.
Close crops really zoom into the details of the typographic curves and distinct connecting points that can hold or frame information.
A pattern was developed as a representation of the natural felt fibres to be used in instances when felt or imagery is not available or required.
Photography played a critical role in this system and we developed a suite of styles to better tell stories about the felt from the purely practical need to showcase the product to needs to developing a unique way to highlight the natural beauty and the feeling of wool felt.
We captured the material details in a series of photographs that emphasize the natural beauty of the wool felt. By rolling, twisting, and rippling the felt into layers we created these dynamic sculptural forms that focus on the natural beauty of felt edges, thickness, pliability, and wool fibres. A singular light source creates high contrasting highlights and shadows and a rich gradient display of colour and texture.
The product photography is designed to focus on the product in the context of an interior space in wide shots and highlight the details and textures of the finished product with tight detail shots. We designed a neutral set to capture the function and scale of each product, using a mixture of natural and artificial lighting to maintain the product’s natural look and highlight the form of the product. Photography by Carmen Cheung.
To highlight Interior Felt’s key differentiator in the industry as a felt manufacturer, a series of photographs were commissioned to highlight the details of the raw materials, and the process of manufacturing wool felt paired with close-ups of natural human interactions that highlight the client’s unparalleled expertise. Photography by Carmen Cheung.
Following the strategic work, visual identity, and photography, we continued to work with the Interior Felt team to develop the brand across a series of applications including a Swatch Kit and a website.
The swatch kit, is a comprehensive sales tool that includes several components that tell the full Interior Felt story. It includes a felt swatch card, a brochure, a business card, and memo swatches.
The swatch card is a vibrant display of the full colour range featuring large interactive felt samples alongside, technical details, and room for personalized content.
The About Brochure tells a larger story of the products and business printed on textured paper to emulate the “Made to Feel” experience.
The landing page simply and beautifully showcases the textural and sensual qualities of felt, embodying the idea of “Made to Feel”. View the live site.
Leveraging the photography styles, from case studies to material details, the product and case study pages show the many capabilities of Interior Felt. Each product page includes a comprehensive technical guide, and an interactive swatch library. View the live site.
As a long time independent collaborator with the Interior Felt team on past product and design development, we’ve had the opportunity to continue supporting their team in rolling out the brand across print and digital materials such as the Product Catalogs featured above.
