As part of a new brand strategy and identity design for the Lab Institute of Design and Fine Arts, known in Finland as Muotoiluinstituutti, Helsinki-based Bond created an identity built on the premise of reform and continual reshaping.
The studio’s brief was to sharpen the institute’s positioning around a single idea: ‘Muotoillaanpa se toisin’, a Finnish phrase that carries a double meaning of ‘Let’s reformulate that’ and ‘Let’s design it differently’.
All images © Bond / Lab Institute of Design and Fine Arts
The line also captures the school’s ethos, say Bond, as a place for encouraging optimistic creative people who will take part in redesigning the world. The idea of the school as a place to nurture ‘reformers’ (‘toisinmuotoilijat’) – people who can create radical yet practical change – came out of this process, Bond explain.
Echoing this, while the logo contains a master form, it continuously reforms and enables a dynamic visual shape to emerges. The mark is “born from the negative space of the logo itself,” say Bond, “becoming both a symbol of creative spark and a living container for the brand.”
The identity also employs a colour system which pairs a black, white and grey base with pink and green accents. “The typography balances classical structure with expressive personality, reinforcing the idea of reform within design tradition,” adds Bond.
Several members of Bond’s creative team are alumni of the Institute itself – even the typefaces are by Schick Toikka, a foundry co-founded by LAB graduate Lauri Toikka. “There was a particular pressure in shaping the identity of a place that shaped us, but that proximity also gave us clarity,” says creative director Nils Kajander.
As most higher education brands communicate what they teach – the suite of programmes or facilities available, even career outcomes – Muotoiluinstituutti is different, says Kajander. “It doesn’t produce polite graduates who slot neatly into the world as it is. It produces reformers. The brand needed to say that out loud,” he says.
“The system we’ve built is deliberately flexible, adaptable and alive; reflecting the mindset it promotes, but it’s also structured and controlled. Reform doesn’t mean tearing everything up. The identity has energy and restlessness, but it’s built on real structure and craft.”