Stockholm Design Lab, I

I recently found the work of Stockholm Design Lab, the firm that designs for Ikea. Yes, that Ikea! The amazing, cool Swedish furniture and accessory store that has delicious food in their cafeteria. I really like Ikea. So I was thrilled to look at the work of the firm behind some of their amazing design! Stockholm Design Lab was also responsible for the Askul packaging I featured recently. Thanks to Grain Edit, via which site I found Stockholm Design Lab.

Stockholm Design Lab has so much great work that I actually want to take two posts to tell you about them. Part II is coming next week!

Today I want to start off by showing you some of Ikea's identity and packaging that Stockholm Design Lab has done. It is just so good. This set of packaging is representative of what I'm sure are hundreds of packages:

And this Ikea Family card is pretty neat. I like the bright orange - it's different from Ikea's usual colors, but it's a nice strong, fun color.

Here's a spread from the design manual. So cool! Even the layout of the manual is excellent, as are the actual things designed for Ikea. Stockholm Design Lab even designed the Ikea Sans font, which seems to be a variation of Futura (it looks pretty similar).

Stockholm Design Lab also did a logo and packaging for Ikea food items. These are so much fun!

I certainly don't plan on eating herring anytime soon, but if I was, I would definitely eat it from this package. (P.S. I can't read Swedish; I just knew it was herring from the picture caption!) It's also fun to see the titles in Swedish since I'm so used to seeing the English versions on my visits to Ikea.

I've seen these soda cans before at Ikea, and they're excellently designed. I love the simple shapes and how the colors really pop.

These designs make me so happy. I love Ikea. I love Stockholm Design Lab.

As a brief interlude, I'd like to talk about why I like this style so much. I like it because it's simple and to the point. Not that other more busy designs can't be great too (they sure can be!), but the simplicity and minimalism of the graphic design for Ikea, and most of Stockholm Design Lab's other work, too, makes the viewer focus on just one thing. I heard (I think I read it in Logo Design Love or perhaps online somewhere) that a logo should leave the viewer with one idea, not two, not seventeen. I think these designs do a good job of implementing that principle.

Okay, moving on to other projects. I love these magazine layouts that Stockholm Design Lab has done. Like the Ikea designs, they are simple and make a big impact. Here are a bunch of images of them:

I like the way the different layouts have different styles, from the photo based one to the bright yellow one. Yet they all have a similar style. I also like the layout of the covers. Putting the title on the right with a smaller type size is unusual, but it's makes the covers look really interesting. I've got to say I really love that bright yellow one though. Nice typography, nice white space, and it happens to be one of my favorite colors!

The design for a museum, Moderna Museet, is also cool. The logotype is quite different from Ikea's, but even with the messy handwriting look, it's still clean, simple, and doesn't leave multiple competing ideas in the viewer's mind.

I like the print materials Stockholm Design Lab did for the museum. Not sure how the chocolate fits in exactly, but hey...a museum with chocolate? Sounds good to me!

The interior of the museum is also pretty - nice and bright!

I especially like the text on the outside of the museum and the type that was written on pavement (it looks like that was for a special exhibition perhaps). What a neat idea!

Here's something for a company you might recognize, H&M. It's a European store that has made its way to the U.S., and I actually quite enjoy shopping there. Stockholm Design Lab did some work for H&M's cosmetics. I think the white backgrounds and creative views on cosmetics are cool and really capture H&M's style.

One more thing before I sign off for today...the identity for Iitalla, a house wares company. I like the way the logo is so clean and modern, but the identity is still warm and inviting because of the layout of the store and the use of chalkboards. I love chalkboards!

I also just noticed that the "i" icon for Iitalla doubles as an exclamation point when it's shown upside down. Way cool!

Well I hope you've enjoyed this peek into the work of Stockholm Design Lab. More is forthcoming soon, so keep your eyes out! I'd love to know what you think of the projects I featured today.

Note: I can't endorse or recommend you look at all the projects on Stockholm Design Lab's website. If you choose to browse through all your work, look carefully as you would with any unfamiliar site.