The client: Founded over 100 years ago on a Danish island, Carl Hansen & Son is now a globally renowned furniture brand known for its impeccable craftsmanship of mid-century icons and its continued collaborations with new, international design visionaries.
Projects: Writing press releases, catalogs, articles, case stories, designer profiles; naming new furniture and accessory products; developing and implementing overarching event concepts; and preparing all materials for design fairs such as Milan Salone del Mobile and the Stockholm Furniture Fair.
I recently wrote Carl Hansen & Son’s coffee-table-book-style 2017 product catalog. Here’s a glimpse:
LIFESTYLE PRODUCT ADS
When Carl Hansen & Son acquired another legacy furniture brand, Rud. Rasmussen, I set to work creating marketing materials for its iconic product line. Here’s an ad I wrote for Monocle magazine.
Below is another ad, this time for The New York Times Style Magazine. It features the newly launched Signature Chair, which had never before been produced – and so had not been named. Carl Hansen & Son asked me to work on this. As the final design Frits Henningsen created – and the one with which he signed off on an illustrious career – “Signature Chair” won out as the most fitting moniker. The flowing lines of the wooden frame are reminiscent of elegant, flowing cursive, and the silhouette features many of the design elements for which Henningsen is now renowned.
PRODUCT NAMING
A few years ago, Carl Hansen & Son teamed up with renowned Austrian design trio EOOS to create a new dining and lounge chair series. The soft, inviting new design paired the brand’s century-old craftsmanship and design DNA with EOOS’ unique, modern vision.
What to call a design that uses a three-dimensional cushion to just about hug the lucky sittee?
Embrace Series by EOOS
Embrace: to take or clasp in the arms; hug; encircle; surround; enclose, include, contain
- With its uniquely constructed seat, the chair almost embraces the occupant, creating a safe, comfortable, relaxing place to be.
- An embrace is also a sign of a friendship, a close relationship between people – in this case, the relationship between EOOS and Carl Hansen & Son.
- The design embraces (unites) two design aesthetics, one modern, one more traditional.
I then told the Embrace story through press releases and product descriptions like this one:
PRESS RELEASES
Here is press release I wrote when the world’s top-ranked Noma restaurant chose Carl Hansen & Son to complete the authentic Scandinavian ambience at its Tokyo pop-up restaurant.
“You can write about it – but can you make it?”
During Boston Design Week 2017, I tried my hand at upholstering a Hans Wegner classic – the Wing Chair – at a Carl Hansen & Son event hosted by Lekker Home, Boston (a great modern design shop I later wrote about for The YUME Edit).
Asya Partan 