Embrace
Statement pieces that honour a rich history.
Client
Embrace
African-influenced home decor
Category
Interiors & textiles
Cushions, throws and soft furnishing
What we did
Brand identity. Pattern system. Packaging & labelling. Art direction. Web design. Out-of-home.
The line
A small touch.
01The brief
A whole design
tradition, missing
from the room.
Embrace was founded out of a straightforward observation: African design is largely absent from modern interiors, and the pieces that do exist tend to ask you to commit to a whole aesthetic.
The brand set out to make African-influenced decor not only accessible, but adaptable — a uniquely crafted collection of statement pieces that honour a rich history and still sit comfortably in a contemporary space.
Two demands that usually pull against each other: bold and adaptable.
Bold enough to be worth buying. Restrained enough to live beside a grey sofa someone already owns.
That tension set the whole system: one disciplined brand frame, holding colour that is allowed to be loud.
02Identity
A quiet mark,
so the pattern
can be loud.
The wordmark is a high-contrast serif with a single swash carrying under the letterforms — a small gesture of warmth in an otherwise upright, composed mark. It never competes with the product.
Deep indigo is the constant. Every application starts from it, which is what lets the palette change from piece to piece without the brand coming apart.
03The pattern system
Motifs that
scale up and
break apart.
The geometric motifs work at two registers. Rendered large, one becomes a centrepiece — a sunburst holding the middle of a cushion. Broken down, the small triangles and diamonds become a scatter that fills the ground around it.
Both are drawn from the same vocabulary, so a set of pieces reads as a family without any two being the same.
04Digital & out of home
A small touch.
The site line does the positioning work in three words. You are not being asked to redecorate — you are being offered one piece.
Out of home splits the frame in half: brand on one side, textile on the other. It's the whole proposition in one glance, and it works at speed from a passing train platform.
05What we handed over
One frame,
endless pattern.
- PositioningAccessible and adaptable: African-influenced decor that complements a room instead of replacing it.
- IdentityWordmark, indigo ground, colour palette and the rules that hold them together.
- Pattern systemMotif vocabulary that scales from a centrepiece to a scatter across the whole collection.
- ApplicationsSwing tags, woven labels, retail bags, out-of-home and web design.