Founded in 1899, Åhléns is Sweden’s oldest department store. What started out as a small mail order business is now one of the largest retail chains in the country—with some 80 million customer interactions annually.

To stay relevant, Åhléns had to re-establish itself as a modern department store, stocked with carefully selected items that can be combined across brands and price categories. Our brief was to revamp the brand strategy and to update the existing visual identity.

To Åhléns’ urbane and socially conscious patrons, shopping and sustainability are not contradictions. Inspiration and trends do not equate to use and discard. Premium can be inexpensive and cheap doesn’t necessarily mean a drop in quality. Our basic idea was to move the brand experience—from problem-solver to inspiration. By taking the well-established Åhléns wordmark and single red and build this out into a range of changing visual expressions, we added character while retaining a recognisable immediacy through simplicity.

The updated visual identity provides the flexibility needed for high impact at every touchpoint, both on- and offline, with the typography lending character and style. The single red brand colour has become a lively palette of shades, giving way to multiplicity. A new emblem, based on the logo, adds dynamism, hinting at the store’s wide assortment. By zooming in on it, a wondrous world of new patterns emerges. New art direction of both still life and moving image frames the variety the store offers, and develops the graphic language of type, bringing in material detail.

Åhlens new visual identity has gradually been implemented all over Sweden, including new home and beauty departments and high-profile design collaborations. Continuous brand tracking shows that consumer awareness has steadily increased since the initial launching of the new visual identity. The visual identity has also been recognized in a branding context—on blogs such as Brand New and BP&O (by Richard Baird).