Hans Svenning Rebranding
A full rebrand for Hans Svenning, a German timber company, keeping the red the market already knew and replacing everything else with a modern combined logo, now used across trucks, uniforms and social media.
Hans Svenning is a German timber and wood products company (Holzprodukte) that had grown on the strength of its work but carried a handmade, improvised brand that no longer matched it.
Hans Svenning is a timber and wood products company in Germany with a real reputation in its trade and a brand that did not reflect it. The old identity was a blue “HS” monogram set over a swoosh on a red field, with a “Holzprodukte” descriptor underneath, put together informally over the years and inconsistent from one application to the next. There was no manual and no system holding it together, so every uniform, vehicle and sign looked slightly different. The company wanted an identity that read as serious and modern, and that anyone in the business could apply correctly without a designer in the room.
We started with a research document, reading the company, its market and its competitors before drawing a single line, so the new brand answered to the business rather than to taste. One decision came straight out of that reading: keep the red. It was the one piece of the old brand the market already recognised, so we held onto it and replaced everything around it. We designed a new mark as an isologo, a single white monogram drawn in clean, rounded geometric forms that reverses out of the company red and stays legible burned onto wood, printed on a truck or shrunk to a social avatar. The blue letters, the swoosh and the descriptor were gone. Around the mark we set the full system, colour, typography, spacing and the rules for how it is used and misused, and wrote it into a usage manual the company could hand to a printer, a signmaker or a uniform supplier. We also delivered a set of social media templates so the brand could hold its consistency in the channels the company runs day to day.
The work was done together with a collaborator based in Germany, close to the client, who wrote the German-language copy, produced the photography and video of the brand in use, and carried the company’s feedback back into each round. That kept the identity grounded in how Hans Svenning actually looks and speaks on the ground, not just on screen. The result is a single, coherent brand the company adopted across everything it puts out, worn, driven and posted, including by Hans Svenning himself.
Project info
Requirements
Replace an amateur, self-made brand with a modern, coherent identity for a German timber company, and make it usable without a designer. The work had to cover the research behind the brand, a new logo, a complete usage manual and social media templates, keep the recognisable brand red, and hold together across the company's real applications: uniforms, trucks, signage and social channels.
Strategies & techniques
Brand research · Market and competitor analysis · Brand strategy and positioning · Logo and isologo design · Monogram design · Visual identity system · Colour and typography system · Brand usage manual (guidelines) · Social media templates · Photography and video art direction · Brand application across print, vehicles, signage and uniforms · Copywriting and client feedback managed through an in-market collaborator
Tools
Ideation: a written research document reading the company, its market and its competitors, turned into the brand strategy and the decision to keep the equity in the red while replacing everything else. Design and prototyping: vector design of the isologo and the full visual system (colour, typography and spacing), with the white monogram tested at the sizes and surfaces it had to survive, from a truck panel down to a social avatar, in solid form and reversed out of the brand red. Delivery: a complete brand usage manual laying out correct and incorrect use, plus editable social media templates, produced together with a Germany-based collaborator who wrote the German copy, shot the photography and video of the brand in use, and ran the client's feedback into each round.
Final results
The engagement delivered a complete brand: a research foundation, a new isologo built from a white monogram on the company red, a full usage manual and a set of social media templates. Hans Svenning replaced its old blue “HS” and swoosh mark and adopted the new identity across its whole presence, uniforms, trucks, signage, printed material and social media, and it is the brand the company uses in the field today, worn and driven by its own team and by Hans Svenning himself. The photography and video produced with the in-market collaborator document the brand in real use rather than as a mockup.
Photo gallery
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