The Sumi 墨 Collection of hand crafted rugs represents a dialogue between my original hand painted designs and the artisan skills of the master craftspeople who make them. The original designs were painted with sumi ink and I wanted to create a brand identity which reflected their starting point.
The eight designs within the collection were greatly inspired by my love of Japanese design. I wanted to portray this influence within my typographic treatment of the title. For each of the eight designs and the collection as a whole, the Japanese characters appear directly next to their English counterparts.
Cabrito Didone by Jeremy Dooley was chosen for its luxurious feel but also for its unusual serifs which give it additional character. It’s high degree of legibility also translated beautifully from print to screen. This was contrasted with Museo Sans by Jos Buivenga and paired with Hiragino Sans where Japanese characters were required.
Cabrito Didone has an incredible twenty one different weights plus italic variants. Museo Sans also has an excellent array of weights which taken together provided an extensive typographic palette for current and future design applications.
A sub-brand was created for each of the eight patterns to give a flavour for their individual personalities and characteristics which was very helpful for promotional purposes. Each featured a section of the pattern itself together with its English and Japanese name. The first pattern in the collection is Mountain – Yama 山 which is shown here. With thanks to Phil Smy for his assistance with translation.
Shown is a spread from the promotional brochure which shows the ident for the Mountain – Yama 山 pattern. The brochure was created to accompany the collection on the Rug Couture stand at Decorex.
Every pattern was created at a very high resolution to give plenty of scope for manipulation and use within promotional media. This shows the Sand – Suna 砂 pattern coloured for use on social media.
All the patterns in the collection were created to sit alongside each other to give plenty of scope for larger properties, multi-room schemes and for the trade. For the photographic imagery we decided to show several pieces together for this reason. The was the lead promotional image. Photography by Chris Webb Photography.
This shows the cover of the brochure together with one of the introductory spreads which pulls together the wordmarks, typographic palette and lead imagery. This was beautifully printed on uncoated stock for a natural, tactile feel befitting the product.
Each pattern was given two double page spreads. The first set the scene; giving background information on how the design was created and also advice as to its placement within a scheme. Sympathetic imagery was selected to convey the inspiration behind the pattern.
The first spread also shows a further development of the typographic palette. The second spread shows the four standard colourways available in the design in question; in this case the Rocks - Iwa 岩 design.
Responsive website design produced to accompany the launch of the collection. Wordpress development by Murray Longworth.
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