Tilly Sveaas Jewellery by Bond, United Kingdom

Opinion by Richard Baird.

Tilly Sveaas is a London-based jewellery designer, and the designer behind Silver Service Jewellery. This year sees the launch of her first collection under her own name. This features a brand identity created by the London office of international design studio Bond, and included art direction, postcards, business cards and packaging. Through typographic form, colour, finish and photography, Bond’s brand identity for Tilly Sveaas Jewellery intends to distil and express the signature style of the brand, one described as being luxury with a progressive edge.

Bond’s work for Tilly Sveaas Jewellery is an unexpected combination of type, colour and material that forgoes familiar luxury cues, and typographical and colour conventions in favour of something a little more robust.

Where often you see gold block foil, there is white, and where you might expect dyed uncoated black or white boards, there is grey. The natural skin tones and brighter dressing of fashion photography gives way to a more moody black and white, and typographically, the reductive and bold exists where typically you might expect to find the delicate and more ornamental.

Art direction clearly takes its cues from brand positioning, outlined online as being a mix of rock chick petulance, sophisti-grunge charm and androgynous allure. This feels well-suited to a collection of chains and charms, layers of long and short, and a contrast of fine and heavy, silver and gold. Where the is an absence of colour, there is plenty of texture and detail. Jewellery feels complimentary rather than a focal point.

Although colour, materiality and photography deliver on impact, positioning and continuity, type is is unexpected, distinctive and a particular highlight. Not just in the condensed uppercase letterforms but also in typesetting; a mix of both generous letter and line spacing, and a contextual awareness, extending to fit packaging and business cards.

Materially speaking, the grey uncoated boards, a white block foil and a blind emboss across business cards feels distinctly industrial, architectural and urban in nature. It immediately sets brand apart, function to frame and draw out the qualities of jewellery and feels in line with a progressive brand tapping into a rock chic appeal.

Design: Bond. Photography: Jonni. Opinion: Richard Baird. Fonts Used: TBC.

What do you think of Bond’s brand identity for Tilly Sveaas Jewellery? Share your thoughts in the comment section below or get the conversation started on Twitter.