2026
Grønning Design
Rebranding project from carpentry shop to design studio.
00 / Summary
Grønning Design was the emerging identity of an established cabinetmaking workshop. Working closely with owner Klaus Grønning, I developed and produced the visual identity, Framer website and communication surrounding its transition from Grønning Møbelsnedkeri.
The task was to give clearer form to qualities already present in the workshop—material responsibility, practical function and an unwillingness to reach for the standardized solution. The identity needed to be direct enough to feel truthful to the workshop, but distinctive enough to express its independence; minimalist authenticity, nonconformist design.
01 / Origins
Built from what was already there
At Grønning, design did not begin with a blank page. It began with a material, a function and the particular conditions of a task.
The workshop produced custom furniture, fitted interiors and storage solutions, while also restoring objects and working with wood that already carried a history. Its practice already expressed in three thematic pillars: Function, Slowwood and Craftsmanship.
Slowwood was Grønning’s name for material responsibility practised at workshop scale. Much of its stock was reclaimed. Hardwood flooring removed during demolition, for example, could become cabinet timber rather than waste. Designs began with the wood already on the shelves, allowing its dimensions, quantity, grain and former use to influence the result. Durability, repair and maintenance extended the same logic across an object’s lifetime.
The rebrand followed a similar principle. By the time I joined, Klaus had already chosen and registered the name Grønning Design. The new name widened the frame around the workshop, making room for drawing, design services and solutions that could be realised beyond it. It did not announce a change in the work’s foundation.
The identity therefore had to begin with what was already there: an established practice, a material philosophy and a recognisable workshop.
New name. New logo. Same workshop.
02 / Identity
A constructed mark
The new geometric G was designed to function both as a digital emblem and as a physical sign: something that could appear on a screen or printed page, but also be stamped, inlaid or burnt into timber.
The identity developed through repeated conversations and shared sketches with Klaus. He brought references from art and design into those discussions as concrete ways of explaining qualities that were otherwise difficult to name. Olly Fathers’ geometric woodwork demonstrated how material, proportion and colour could give elementary forms a distinct presence. Bauhaus provided a broader systemic reference: elementary geometry, functional construction and the attempt to reconnect art, craft and production.
These references gave us a shared visual vocabulary rather than a style to reproduce. Through our discussions, a direction emerged that could be restrained, material and systematic without becoming conventional. From that shared direction, I developed the emblem and the visual system shown here.
Minimalism was not treated as an absence of character, but as a discipline: every element should have a function. Nonconformity did not require adding more. It could emerge from arranging a small number of elements in a less expected way.
The square became the system’s dominant shape. It framed the emblem and continued through navigation, catalogue entries, project cards, page layouts and the treatment of images. Used repeatedly, it gave furniture, workshop photography and written material a common rhythm without requiring them to look alike.
Textures and material imagery kept the geometry connected to the workshop. The result was intended to feel precise without becoming sterile—less like a decorative layer placed over the company than a set of parts constructed around it.
The resulting identity was restrained in expression, but not anonymous in character. Like the furniture, it found expression through the way its parts were joined.
03 / Digital Environment
Quiet, but not obedient
The website needed to recede far enough for visitors to examine furniture, timber and cabinet details without unnecessary distraction. At the same time, it needed to suggest that Grønning did not always reach for the same solution as everyone else.
The frame had to remain quiet without becoming invisible.
The resulting site used a deliberately shallow architecture. Four principal pages—Home, Catalogue, Projects and About—remained directly accessible throughout. Catalogue presented a visual collection of furniture and earlier work, while Projects opened into more detailed accounts of individual commissions. Piet Hein Eek's site offered a corresponding reference for the website. Their presentation of an extensive and varied practice showed that an interface could remain sparse while its structure and navigation still possessed a character of their own.
There was no need to move through a deep hierarchy or interpret a series of dropdown menus. The structure could be understood quickly and traversed in several directions. Within it, square navigation elements, colour and small oblique details shifted the experience away from the expected furniture portfolio.
Four principal pages remain directly accessible throughout the site.
The intention was not to make navigation difficult. It was to make the frame perceptible: to suggest that leaving familiar conventions can lead to more interesting ideas and less predictable solutions.
If the website could remain easy to use while behaving a little differently, it might prepare visitors to see Grønning’s work in the same way: functional and carefully made, but never entirely standard.
The same approach continued through photography, video and writing for LinkedIn. Rather than relying on broad claims about quality or sustainability, the communication remained close to the workshop—describing materials, processes and concrete disciplines. Function, Slowwood and Craftsmanship were not newly invented promises, but names for qualities already present in the work.
04 / Future
A different form
Grønning Design closed out of necessity approximately three months after the work began, before the identity could be implemented in full or meaningfully evaluated. The website and parts of the communication system had entered use; other applications remained prototypes. The brand therefore never became the complete public identity it was intended to be.
The closure ended the company, but not the collaboration behind the project. Klaus and I remain in contact, and we are now exploring how to adapt parts of the website, archive and visual material into a personal site for his private practice. It will not present Grønning Design as though the company continued. Instead, it will carry selected work, experience and ideas from the workshop into a more personal context.
That continuation follows much the same principle as the identity itself: begin with what is already there, retain what still has purpose and reconstruct it for a changed set of conditions.
Grønning Design remains a study in how a new identity can make an existing character more legible—a different frame constructed around the same workshop, its materials and its way of working.
05 / Additional media
Gallery
