Jens Nilsson »&#8203; info@jens-nilsson.com Art Director & Designer. Stockholm, Sweden.

A series of typographic mailer boxes designed for Packhelps launch on the Swedish market.
Each side of each packaging is a part of the buildup of the word Help.
Typeface in use: Fatface by OH no Type.


Packhelp. A series of typographic mailer boxes made for Packhelp.

Kaibosh felt that they had become too boring as opposed to what they should be, a trendy and bold eyewear brand. They felt their identity was too clean and they wanted to be more expressive and outgoing. The assignment was to start out with keeping their existing logotype and from that develop their new identity. The brand and tonality was translated into visual form and matched with a custom-made display typeface, named Sentrum, made to suit the in-store signage and bold fun expressions. The eyelash was used as a symbol to distinguish the identity as well as use as graphic elements for many different scenarios. The entire flagship store was designed together with shelving systems, signage, colors, murals, etc. The whole project ranged from typeface and still life photos to campaigns, fashion-photography, notebooks and towels.
The case has been written about by The Dieline, It's Nice That, Brand New, Creative Review and more.

KAIBOSH. Re-Branding, custom made typography and store concept for a Norwegian eyewear brand.

Re-branding of a danish ice cream called "Wauw". In order to differentiate the packaging from competitors a black case was picked. A "tasty" and "kind" typography chosen to avoid to much of a luxury feel and style. The packaging has been released in 6 different flavours in Scandinavia and has been written about on The Dieline, Brand New, Packaging of the world and more.

WAUW. Re-branding and Packaging design for a Danish "No added sugar" Ice Cream in 6 different yummy flavours.

A sweet but strong pale ale in a 18 cl small bottle meant to gulp in three sips while standing in the shower getting ready for the night. Screen printed in pink on a brown small glass bottle to make the Shower Beer feel elegant and different, and more of an expensive perfume bootle rather than another trendy pale ale beer bottle. Shower Beer is a collaboration between Snask and PangPang Brewery and have gotten huge attention around the world. It has been written about by Vice, Metro, NBC, Thrillist, Esquire, Lad Bible and named droppen by Tom Hanks in the american radio show "Wait wait...don't tell me!".

SHOWER BEER. Concept Beer packaging design for a 18 cl shower beer beauty.

The Swedish Handicraft Association has been around for more than 100 years. With over 17 000 members, 22 regional offices and 8 retail shops they’ve had a big challenge to gather everything under one name and one brand. Snask transformed the typical associations with Swedish handicraft of old butter knifes and knitting into everything made by hand, thus creating something modern but also incorporating a rich history of knowledge and experience. The result ended in a strong symbol and logotype that could be either made by hand on a flat surface, or be built up by wood, stone or concrete.

SWEDISH HANDRICRAFT ASSOCIATION. Identity for brilliant people working with their hands.

In 2014 Scandinavia's largest city festival celebrated 30 years of festivities. The grand party took place in August and roughly 1.4 million people visited the festival over 8 consecutive days. To celebrate the festivals aniversiry in style the largest physical graphic identity the world had ever seen was created: a gigantic physical art installation measuring 13×8 meters! The installation was interaction-friendly and visitors could jump, climb, or just plain chill on it. 2014’s graphic identity for Malmöfestivalen has been featured in hundreds of articles around the world – AdWeek, Creative Review, HOW Design and many more. The praise from visitors in the streets and from the global creative community has exceeded all expectations and the identity won an silver egg in the Swedish communication competition Guldägget.

MALMÖ FESTIVAL 2014. Art direction for the "world’s largest poster" for Scandinavia's largest city festival.

PangPang Pusher is a fruity sour beer series made for the Swedish microbrewery PangPang. The first flavour, Peach Pusher, was released back in 2018 and since then the people of Sweden (and other tastemakers around the globe) has been able to enjoy a bunch of more Pushers like Strawberry, Pina Colada, Mango Habanero, Pink Grapefruit, Passion fruit, Blackberry, Konatsu Elderflower and my personal favorite, Watermelon. I was recently asked about the idea behind the success of this particular design, and I'd like to highlight a few details and strategic choices that I think contributed to its appeal. Firstly, the illustrations in the style of simple outlined objects, allows us the flexibility to experiment with a wide range of vibrant colors while maintaining readability, even when using similar colors tones. This thing is crucial in maintaining the functionality of the design. Secondly, compared to a classic "one front beer" look, this design and label has a more full covering and complex three-part appearance. It starts with the hand and the fingers holding the plastic bag and then extends to the golden ratio-esque text layout front side. This creates a more visually engaging composition. Lastly, the transparent section on the middle of the label not only represents the plastic bag's see-through look, but also adds depth and the texture from the metallic can itself. This detail enhances the overall visual appeal, and creates a better between the can and the label itself.

PangPang Pusher. Sour beers for the non-beerded.

Identity for the Stockholm based interior design and carpenter firm Maldini Studios. The studio consists of project manager and carpenter Rasmus Moberg, interior designer Elina Johansson and carpenter Theo Klyvare. The identity has a high focus on textures and materials with the custom made typeface, Faxi, as the main component. The letterpress printed stationaries are printed on mixed textured papers from GF Smith and Arjowiggins. 

Maldini Studios. Identity for a Stockholm based interior design and carpenter firm.

Faxi is a typeface designed by Jens Nilsson and Kenneth Knutsen at Good Type Foundry. Originally called Donadoni and made for the Stockholm based interior firm Maldini Studios. The typeface has during 2020 been refined and further developed and can now be bought at goodtypefoundry.com.

FAXI TYPEFACE — A custom made typeface done in collaboration with Good Type Foundry.

A new logotype and a re-branding of the identity together with a neon sign for the office dive bar, was created for the previous employer Snask back in 2014. Snask is a branding and film agency in Stockholm.

SNASK. Logotype, neon signage and rebranding for Swedens number one rock ‘n’ roll agency.

Simris is a Swedish pioneering agribusiness that farm, grow, and harvest algae on Österlen, Sweden’s California. The company operate in an exciting new market and has won plenty of awards for its innovative product — algae. The goal of the Simris graphic identity was to make the brand feel international, premium, human and not as a stereotypical health care product. The project included a new identity, graphic manual, event design, branded material and packaging design for 2 different product lines. Try Simris algae products, shop.simrisalg.se!

SIMRIS. Identity & packaging for the award-winning agribusiness from Sweden's California.

Beer label design and art direction for PangPang Brewerys “Can Release” - A cloudy can beer released in a bottle. Black and white screen print on a silver foil die-cut label. Pktsch!

CAN RELEASE. Beer label design for PangPang Brewery.

By the age of 23, oddball Fredrik Tunedal tattooed PangPang on his knuckles to celebrate his founding of PangPang Brewery – Sweden’s #1 microbrewery. The brewery has a passion for hand-brewed beers and in 2014 he wanted to release a summer beer series. The concept was built around an exotic tiki theme and the beers was named Libertango, Bamboleo, FlaminGo-Go and Tiki Tango. The labels have an (intentionally) semi wordart type style with a clear pastel color as the identity key stone for each flavour. Tiki Tango and FlaminGo-Go is today Fredriks 2 main best sellers. 

PANGPANG. Packaging for a caribbean beer series for Sweden's #1 microbrewery.

The ad agency Latinworks came to Snask with the brief to visualize a campaign towards the US Hispanic market for the big retail chain Target. The campaign was based around words that was hard to translate from Spanish to English. Words that had deeper meanings than just one simple word translation. Snasks job was to visualise the campaigns different posts in social media, spread out over a year. The meaning of every word got to decide the style and content of every post. For example the word "Madrugar" means to get out of bed earlier than usual. This post was planned for the first day of school in August when parents woke their children up earlier than normal to prepare them for their big day. To do this we created a loving breakfast made for the child and built the word "Madrugar" entirely out of corn flakes. Every post was entirely made by hand and shot in Milk Studios in New York.

TARGET. Type design and art direction for a social media campaign for the 2nd-largest discount retailer in the US.

Written in 72 hours, this is an action-packed journey of Snasks first five years in the business. It is an action-packed journey about making it big through branding, pink lies, bold ideas, great design and loads of fun. Praised by design gurus as well as business owners and management consultants. Now out in an all gold 2nd edition with extra content, updated cases and new outro, even though the gold cover really is the deal breaker!

MAKE ENEMIES & GAIN FANS. Editorial design for the true and unraveling story about SNASK.

Liljevalchs gallery is Sweden’s first independent and public art gallery of contemporary art and opened in 1916. One of the first exhibitions was the renowned handicraft exhibition in 1917, which gave birth to some of Sweden’s most prominent designers such as Carl Malmsten and Gunnar Asplund. In 2012 Liljevalchs chose to exhibit “Swedish Handicraft 100 Years” which celebrated the Swedish handicraft 100 years back until today. This visual identity was created and carried out in exhibition design, catalogues, advertisement and more.

LILJEVALCHS: HEMSLÖJDEN. Exhibition identity - complete with embroided typography - for the Handicraft exhibition.

The 29th edition of Malmöfestivalen, Scandinavia’s largest city festival, had “paper” as that years theme. The whole city of Malmö, as well as every piece of communication and branding, needed to get a coat of paper to communicate the chosen concept. The main artwork for magazine covers and posters was made by hand all in colorful paper with the fun festival wagon as the main art piece. For a month cutting, folding, gluing and modelling became the everyday task.

MALMÖ FESTIVAL 2013. "All in paper"-Identity concept for Scandinavia’s largest city festival.

In 2013 Sweden's most credible and celebrated rock club Debaser opened a brand new Mexican restaurant in Stockholm. The identity of Calexico’s was made with the ambition to take Mexican food into Stockholm’s dining rooms, mixed with Sangria and frozen Margaritas. All the typography was handmade and inspired by Mexican street taqueria signs. The pastell colour palette was accompanied by copper to add a luxurious feel. Everything carried the identity – from the menu to the clothes and the plates. The menus were printed as disposable coasters, which helped the hungry who now have their food options available the instant they sit down.

CALEXICO'S. Identity and type design for a Mexican restaurant in Stockholm.

YAY Festival is a collaboration between Snask and Grandins Flying Circus and started in 2013. The idea was to create a festival with the combination of inspiring and entertaining talks, live music and a spectacular after party. The identity was built around a clean and friendly circular symbol/logotype together with a wild and crazy handpainted water color typography. The "jungle graveyard" photo concept was created with loads of palm leafs, mud and smoke and was executed as an art piece used as a background imagery for all the communication areas. Some of the speakers of the festivals has been Aaron James Draplin, Lotta Lundgren, Jessica Walsh, Maddox and James Victore.

YAY Festival. Identity & photo concepts for the Scandinavian creative festival Yay.

Logotypes from above: 
Snask – Stockholm based design agency 
Hemslöjden — The Swedish handicraft society 
YAY — Swedish creative festival 
VÄG — Swedish rockband 
WAUW — Danish ice cream brand 
Oqma — Stockholm based hair saloon 
FTG (Fast Travel Games) — Swedish virtual reality game studio 
Public Class — Swedish developer studio (today called Department) 
ST (Studio Total) — Swedish legendary public relations studio 
Northern Trail — Swedish event managment focusing on country music 
(EGG) Greasy Spoon — English brunch and breakfast place 
Simris — Swedish algae company 
Calexico's — Mexican restaurant in Stockholm 
Mobiento — Creative mobile agency 
(Moon man) Sthlm Americana — Swedish americana festival

LOGOTYPE COLLECTION. A selection of logotypes and brandmarks created between 2006 & 2016.

The singer in a rock band sold his band to Snask at 04.30 at an after party for $3.000 with the condition that band name as well as their style of music could be changed. The day after the singer changed his mind but Snask had his signature in blood. To be fair a record label (Snask Recordings) was started and signed them with the same conditions. The identity of the band digged deep into a 70's visual style and went all in on a classic flower power logotype. The logotype was developed into a psychedelic pattern/animations that was used for backdrops and screenings in live shows.

VÄG. Logotype, identity and album cover for the swedish rock band Väg, formerly known as Road.

Liljevalchs Konsthall is an almost 100-year-old independent public gallery for contemporary art. It displays art and design on the occasion of at least four large and lavish exhibitions each year. The summer exhibition of 2014 presented a range of magnificent craft artists and their work. The graphic identity was entirely created out of crafted materials all wrapped in a minimalistic surrounding. The word CRAFT was designed through custom lettering and entirely handmade with copper, marble, porcelain, wood and stone while the rest of the typography was kept simple and quite quiet. The production by hand and the choice of materials allowed the identity to mirror the content of the exhibition without taking the attention away from the artists.