Design & Practice: Olin Origins

posted by Emily Gosling July 1, 2021

Amsterdam-based creative agency Design & Practice has created the visual identity for new coloured creative paper range Olin Origins, in a project merging the studio’s graphic design expertise with its fine art background.

Design & Practice is an Amsterdam-based operating design studio specialising in branding, graphic design and art direction, working mainly for clients in the cultural, creative, design and interior sector.

The studio’s founders, Ruben de la Rive Box and Golnar Roshan, approach design and branding from an experimental philosophy rooted in the idea of artistic research. This approach extends from their artistic studio duo Rive Roshan, According to de la Rive Box and Roshan, “the studio creates to connect with people intuitively through exploring visual wonder as a means to emotional well-being.” Rive Roshan’s work has been on show at Les Musée des Arts Decoratifs Paris, The Old Selfridges Hotel London, Powerhouse Museum Sydney, Shanghai Museum of Glass, Museum JAN with a recent acquisition by National Gallery Victoria.

The Olin paper range, owned by paper merchants Antalis, was rebranded and repositioned by Design & Practice in April.

The branding doesn’t rely on a singular logo or mark: instead, the designers created a mutable and adaptable icon that can be used as a graphic device, consistent brand mark, content window and more. “The way we see brand identity development nowadays is that a logo is sort of still important, but it’s the starting point, or the sign off,” says de la Rive Box.

As such, quite early on the designers took the incumbent Olin logo—a simple circle shape—and combined it with the original logo’s use of an infinity loop. The new circle device is constantly reinterpreted across different touchpoints. On the inspiration packs, for instance, the circle acts as a closure mechanism where the circle completes itself; while on the sample folder it becomes a window that reveals the different coloured papers in the range. “It’s a graphic that constantly gets reinterpreted in different graphics and in different print processes,” de la Rive Box explains. “We keep reinterpreting the idea of the circle, and that also shows the approach to building a brand that we took.”

The designs are used across all Olin touchpoints, including digital social assets and an accessible link to the Antalis website, and particular attention was paid to the physical “tools”, or samples, that designers use to select papers at printers, merchants or paper mills.

Following on from that broader brand work, the agency was tasked with creating new designs for the Olin Origins collection of papers that sits within the Olin brand, the second Olin range launched this year.

Olin Origins is a premium eco-conscious paper in three weights that aims to “capture the essence of nature through the materiality of paper”, designed for uses such as packaging, stationery, business cards and other print projects that prize tactility.

The range consists of ﬁve natural colours inspired by natural materials such as lava stone, cereal, pebble, chalk and indigo; which in turn inspired Design & Practice to hand-craft physical sculptures using materials such as stone, glass and metal, in collaboration with a metal sculptor.

These sculptural pieces were then translated from their 3D forms back into 2D images to bring the craft of print to life across the Olin Origins collection. “Because we have this very experimental approach in our artistic practice, we draw that way of working into our design practice and the work that we do for our clients,” Roshan explains.

Design & Practice created a series of tools including the inspiration packs, envelopes and sample folders to bring the range and identity to life physically. These include postcards showcasing the imagery of the sculptural artworks, which are used to demonstrate the possibilities of Olin Origins paper. “It’s about content that inspires the designer,” says Roshan.