Standard rebranding - Brand Manual

Client
Standard

Industry
B2B / Furniture production / Manufacturing

What we did?
Brand architecture
Brand identity
Design audit
Environmental design
Touchpoint mapping

Standard has been making furniture for over 75 years. It has grown from regional maker of everything to a made-to-order specialist furnishing fashionable interiors all across Europe and beyond. The ambition is now to become a global player, building on the strong work ethic and aesthetic of their Northern European heritage that have brought them this far.

Standard today is far removed from the ubiquitous brown office shelves and tables where it began. Its furniture can be found in high-end hotels from Munich to Copenhagen and in the workspaces of fashion forward Nordic companies. However, Standard’s self-perception was not in synch with the quality and style of work the company delivered every day, and the soul-searching over the years led to a cacophony of identities trying to define who and what Standard is.

Since brands are what they do, not what they say, we worked with Standard’s team to explore what the common denominators were for their customers. This led finally to a new focus on a unified brand value that speaks across all of Standard’s selection and that customers can easily associate with the brand.

Whether a hotel or an office – people spend a lot of time there.

This user-centric focus helped everyone to understand that Standard has a mission: to create environments that are comfortable and functional for days and months on end. This helped shift focus from the production of furniture to delivering solutions to customer’s problems. Not just chairs or cupboards and divider walls, but well thought out spaces fit for humans. This is a value proposition that Standard’s customers can really appreciate.

This focus on the end result helped to streamline processes and increase the motivation for staff at all levels of the company. Everyone at Standard is a Master At Work, responsible for delivering an impeccable end result. We mapped all the steps of the customer journey and internal touchpoints, from proposal to project, material selection to construction, all the way to delivery, assembly and handover. Once everyone was onboard and agreed with what we wanted to say, all that remained was to say it.

The end result is a visual identity that is simple. The central motif is a circular seal of quality. Whenever applied, it is a guarantee that the work is up to Standard. Supported by a signature colour palette, photography style and minimalist graphic design, it will steadily build up the image of a new benchmark in Nordic furniture manufacturing.