We’ve worked with howies on several great projects over the years. However one of our most cost effective solutions proved to be the most memorable.
Having designed the new packaging for howies’ organic cotton t-shirts using recycled tulip bulb bags, we were asked to create an individual and unusual point of sale display to showcase the range. The result was unexpected but highly acclaimed.
As we’d featured discarded furniture being interacted with by skateboarders and bikers on the packaging it made sense if we could link this theme of recyclability to the point of sale. As a result we amassed fourteen old wardrobes from various sources including underpasses to house clearance shops and had them delivered to our studio.
Before travelling to 14 stores around the world the transformed wardrobes were given a minimal refit in keeping with the simplicity of the concept.
Individual artists, illustrators, architects and designers (ourselves included) worked as artists in residence in turning these discarded wooden 3D canvases into works of art, each one proclaiming a belief close to howies’ heart.
“It is not often that you work with people who have a ‘feeling’ for your company. A feeling for why your company exists, it’s struggle, it’s purpose, it’s hopes for the future. It is both hard to articulate and even harder to understand. Working with Phil was, and is, always a pleasure because he gets it. When I see the website he created for us, the packaging he created for us, the wardrobes that he created for us, I see howies baring its soul. It couldnŐt be for anyone else. That is only possible when you have an intuitive feeling for something.”