74 — SNASK by Design Friends

Branding, identity, design… and a little bit of therapy, with SNASK Partners

Freddie Öst and Erik Kockum

First thing's first: what does SNASK mean?

In old Swedish, SNASK means gossip, filth, and candy. In a way, it's not a very nice word.

But it's funny because when we speak to British or American people, they say SNASK sounds almost disgusting, but kind of sweet too.

Naming things that well is not easy!

For us, a name has to be short and memorable. That is very important. If you can achieve that, you have made a very good start, because you can fill a name with any value that you want.

Look at Acne Studios, the Swedish fashion brand and agency. Everyone thought it was a really bad name. But it's short, memorable and today, when people speak about Acne in Sweden, they aren't talking about something on your face. They're talking about cool fashion and accessories.

How did SNASK get started? What's your backstory?

We were studying graphic design in Carlisle, in the UK. At a design school called the Cumbria Institute of the Arts, which is now Cumbria University. This was almost 20 years ago, back in 2004.

We were there for three years and there was not much to do, other than focus on your studies. That is, if you didn't want to get hammered, smoke joints and fight chavs.

How did you all end up in Carlisle?

We were doing lots of different things before that, but almost everyone was into music.

Eric was playing in a band. I was booking a lot of bands and DJing. We were running a lot of club nights and stuff like that. Music festivals, posters, flyers, all that stuff.

And then there was a Swedish teacher at this design school in England, who went back to Sweden and got a lot of Swedish students to go to his school in England…

With a dedicated focus on craft (bordering on mania), fourteen human beings brought life to the digital shapes of the Typeface "Hamster" from Fontwerk through physical form.

So you studied graphic design, but today SNASK is a full service agency, right?

In our first years, we were doing a lot of graphic design. But we never did design without a strategy, or without a meaning. So we always created a strategy, but we were too stupid to invoice for it!

Then, one day, after a few years of this, a friend of ours came by. He looked at our invoice, and said, "The work you do in the strategy part, that's where I invoice the most. So you guys are idiots." And that's how the brand strategy and tone of voice came in.

But to answer your question, no we are not a full service agency. To us, that's a decathlon, fairly alright at 10 sports but won't be excellent in any of them. We're more niche and only focus on the things we're passionate and have some talent in.

Brand strategy has become an essential, hasn't it?

It really has, for your own sanity as much as anything.

Your role as a graphic designer is not just to show the client something nice, but to actually take their hand and lead them through the process. If you don't do this, they will find your design to be poorly articulated, because, of course, they don't really speak design.

So, in order for you to present your work in the best, most understandable way – and to get good feedback – you basically need to explain all the steps you go through in the design process.

Clients need to understand why you're taking decisions left or right. That becomes the strategy in the end.

You guys clearly still love music.

In the last five years, we've given talks at conferences in about 35 countries.

We always brought our band to the show, and we always wanted to headline!

We don't think of business-to-business or business-to-consumer, because in the end, it's human-to-human, isn't it?

You mean SNASK does not fear the 'end of the day' slot?

To us, speaking last is exactly what we want to do.

A lot of the speakers dread that hour. They think that everyone will be tired. They'll have sat through all the other talks already. They will be bored and just want to go out and drink a glass of wine or whatever.

But to us – no! That's the best spot. It's our job to entertain, to inspire and make sure that the audience is energized. It's just like headlining a festival.

No wonder you're in demand. What's your schedule for 2024 looking like?

Next month, we're going to Tallinn, then Luxembourg, Hamburg, Vancouver and Warsaw... After that, Vienna and Mexico. The more you speak at conferences, the more conferences want to book you.

Seeing so much of the world, are you inspired by local diversity?

Everything that we do comes from culture, from everyday life.

Inspiration comes from our best friends, politics, literature, Netflix, soap operas, whatever... So naturally, when we're travelling, we meet people and they influence our work.

But it's not like we go to Mexico and bring home inspiration from Mexican street typography. That's available through the internet already. It's more that the people we meet, we get inspired by them.

On the subject of inspiration, the humour in your work is truly fantastic.

Is it difficult to keep smiling in these increasingly serious times?

No! To us, there are funny people and unfunny people. The world is mostly made up of unfunny people. People with no sense of humour.

To us, making even the humourless people smile, and pissing off the people that refuse to smile. That's our motto. We love that. That's the perfect way. But, being able to do that requires empathy.

Empathy is a defining quality for human beings, isn't it?

We believe in love, empathy and honesty. How it runs through our teams and how it runs through the way we work with our clients. We want very much to be humans, on the same level as our clients.

We value love and empathy in the way that we choose and carry out our self initiated projects too. If it's rebranding North Korea, or a poster about the extreme right wing – it always has to do with fighting for more love and empathy.

But then again, when it comes to design, we never wanted to create work that is just pretty. We want design that evokes emotions. For that, empathy is the foundation. And love is the foundation. That is, if you want to evoke the right kind of emotions in people.

Of course, we can shock people too, and provoke, but there has to be some kind of empathy as well.

Rebrand, creative concept and visual world for the legendary luxury hifi brand Bang & Olufsen. The new brand focused less on the product benefits and more the feeling of the brand.

It focused on presence since it's the most luxurious thing you can give and receive from each other these days.

A good designer has to be a keen observer of people.

We strongly believe that buying behaviour is not rational. It's not in your brain, but in your gut, in your feelings.

BMW is a classic example. You don't buy a BMW because of the product benefits. Four wheel drive, German engineering, and so on... You buy it because you want to live the lifestyle of a BMW driver.

If you buy a Chanel bag, you don't come home with it and tell everyone "look, it has five pockets!" It is about lifestyle.

All that feeds into design strategy, right?

Take the Chanel bag example. If you wear a Chanel handbag that you know is fake, even if everyone around you believes it is real, your brain won't reward you with the dopamine kick you would get if it was genuine.

That's how deeply rooted our reward system is.

That is bizarre and completely logical at the same time.

We rebranded Bang & Olufsen, the luxury hi-fi company. Before we came in, they were only really talking about the technical aspects and the sound quality of their equipment.

But, a Sonos speaker costs £800, while Bang & Olufsen speakers cost between £6000 to £80,000.

Remember, sound quality is destroyed by apps like Spotify, it compresses the audio. And secondly, very few people can hear the difference between an £800 speaker and £80,000 speaker. The human ear is not capable, except for a very few selected geniuses that also tend to be the people who sell extremely expensive cables and audio equipment to their following of audio sect members.

But none of that matters, because people don't buy a B&O speaker because of the sound quality, they buy it because it makes them feel good. It fits their lifestyle.

SNASK uses so many different mediums, how do you translate that lifestyle vision into design?

We start with our foundations – love and empathy.

When it comes to design, we want to evoke emotions. But we also want the words to evoke emotions. And we want film and photography to tell a story and evoke emotions.

We don't think of business-tobusiness or business-to-consumer, because in the end, it's humanto-human, isn't it? One human is sending a message that another human is going to receive.

We want that message to remain as intact as possible. Exactly as it was intended, ideally. That's what we want to achieve in every channel. Doesn't matter whether it's photography, or print, animation, or whatever.

Sometimes, the message needs tweaking.

Other times, a new message is required. How do you determin the type of brand therapy that's needed?

Brand Therapy is kind of accurate here because, just like real therapy, maybe just 1% of all the clients in the world understand that they need therapy and exactly what therapy they actually need.

It's the same with a rebrand, very few clients know exactly what kind of rebrand they need. So when they come to us, most of the time we have to help them rewrite their brief.

When we do that, we have to start at the beginning, do things right. No guessing. Everything has to follow the direction that we point out from the personality of the brand. The voice, the words and the messaging, all the way out to how it looks in the end.

So, in a way it is therapy. And then we sometimes need therapy afterwards!

Do you have a lot of in-house talent?

Or do you collaborate with independent creatives?

We work mostly with consultants. Having said that, several of them have been employed by us over the years. We've been working with some of them for 16 years.

We like to put together the best team for each project. If you have someone on your payroll, then that person has to do the next project that comes in. Not based on whether they are the most suitable. It's just based on that person not having enough to do.

Of course, that's natural from a financial standpoint. But if you think about what's best for the project, it doesn't make that much sense.

We start with our foundations –love and empathy.

How come you chose to do your 'about us' video on the badminton court?

We wanted to make a film about SNASK, but we needed a frame for our ideas. Then someone asked, "why do we have 'badminton' as our Wi-Fi password?"

No one knew why. It just happened that, 17 years ago when we got a modem, someone put 'badminton' as the password, and it stuck. So we decided to use our Wi-Fi password as the frame. That meant we had to make a badminton film.

We got a lot of '70s looking outfits and we made a story about SNASK fighting the old conservative world. In this instance, the old conservative world was transformed into a chicken. And the SNASK team comes together to fight this evil chicken.

Creative direction, original films and photography for the " Smoooth " Campaign of cutting-edge financial giant Klarna. Left: smoooth payments make your life magical. Right: smoooth banking ushers in a life of unbound leisure.

Any feedback from the world of shuttlecocks?

The funny thing is that the BVF –the FIFA of badminton – they picked up this video and got their whole community to check it out. And it got so much hate!

Men all across the world were furious because this is a serious sport. And they're very macho.

They were mad that the net is too high and we weren't playing badminton properly. They were mad with the BVF for helping to make their sport a joke. And we just said, "It's you who are a joke, not your sport."

The video got a lot of praise from a lot of people too. Everyone from badminton professionals to the manager of the Swedish national team commented.

We do not hire assholes.

There's no such thing as bad publicity, is there?

Exactly! Our Dollarstore campaign had a similar effect.

Dollarstore is a shop where the idea is that you can almost buy everything in the store for $1. We made a Halloween campaign for them.

Some people joke about visiting Dollarstore – or any other low price store for that matter – that it's like visiting hell. So we made a whole thing about, "Welcome to Dollarstore. Welcome to hell." We even created this giant squid from hell. It was Halloween, after all.

But so many people – religious people – got furious because, 'Hell' is connected to Satan. In the end, they tore down the billboards and burned the posters!

Wow, that's an extreme reaction!

When it came to Christmas, we were thinking, 'What are we going to do for Dollarstore at Christmas?' It has to be, "Welcome to heaven!" And "Holy crap. Heavenly prices!"

Did they like that one better?

They liked it a little bit better, but it still got loads of publicity.

Loads of people loved it – all the people with a sense of humour, anyway. Humour is healthy.

The religious theme brings us to SNASK's very own 10 commandments. How did they come about?

It started when we were living in Carlisle. We had begun to sketch some ideas for SNASK as a brand and an agency. And to kick this off we were writing down everything that annoyed us.

Pretty soon we were up to 112 commandments.

You would need a lot of stone tablets for that.

Just like God and Moses, we realised this was an unrealistic number of commandments, so we tried to cut the list down to 10.

The best one for me, personally, is "generosity always pays itself back." The best way of achieving great work is through teamwork, not through hiding your ideas or counting who is owed credit for something.

This is particularly true when working on something as teamdriven as film production. The film world is very, very strict when it comes to the process. There's so much hierarchy and so many tightly defined roles. Without a nice vibe, you quickly lose the meaning behind things.

The way we've tried to solve this problem is: we do not hire assholes. This is important because there's a lot of assholes out there that are good at what they do. But in a very strict environment like film production, if there's only nice people, we can work in a hierarchical setup, no problem.

It works! Your videos feel very natural.

Everything today is so slick but often it lacks a real 'why?'

Like when Matt Damon did those ads for Crypto.com, somehow likening being an astronaut in space to buying crypto. To us, that's just stupid.

Don't do what everybody else is doing.

Humour is seen as a risk by a lot of people though, isn't it?

When you're a brand and you want to reach out to people, there's a lot of noise and distraction going on. It can be difficult.

We work with a lot of banks and financial institutions. They come to us and say things like, "we want to build trust with our customers, trust is very important." And then we ask them, "what is trust?"

Trust is not about wearing a suit and using good grammar. The people you trust the most in your life –your parents, siblings, your partner, your friends. You don't trust them because they walk around being perfect.

You trust them because they are imperfect, because they make mistakes, because they are human. Because they call out your bullshit. And when they say they love you, you know that they really mean it. That's how you build trust.

When the client comes to understand this, you can reach out to people, you can break through the noise. And humour is a great way to cut through this noise.

"#monkifesto" campaign created for Swedish fashion brand Monki's 10th anniversary celebrating and empowering women through 10 statements.

Hedvig – Nice Insurance for Nice People. Concept and visual language for the Swedish insurance-disruptor.

People often don't want to think too deeply, do they?

I think it's our job to do it. And to challenge our industry as well. Don't do what everyone else is doing.

Get your inspiration from everyday life, from your cat, or from your best friend that fell over in the snow, from real life! Finding inspiration from there is much more interesting.

What's on the slate at the moment?

Any dream jobs?

As a company, our aim is to make our lives better, and to maybe help out the world somehow, by doing things that we're passionate about.

Part of that is doing client work, branding, design and film. Some of that is doing self initiated projects. We would love to rebrand a country. That would be very interesting.

You mentioned North Korea earlier?

Yeah, we did that already, but we didn't ask them.

A magazine asked to do a rebrand. They told us we could choose any brand in the world – even Coca Cola. "Rebrand it, and we will publish it", they said.

But we decided to rebrand North Korea and they published that!

We sent a letter to the embassy saying, "If you become a democracy you will get this identity for free." Then we made a website, "Love is Korea." Which is what we renamed them.

We got a lot of threats from that!

"Stop now or we will cyber attack you." The other one was, "remove this now, final warning!" We replied asking, "Is this the final warning? We didn't receive the first warning... Can you resend that, please?"

We didn't take it too seriously.

You can't win them all!

Well, we also speak a lot about making enemies and gaining fans. That's the title of our book, but it's also our belief that in branding, the company needs to have real values.

Brands need to stand up for these values, voice them publicly. If they do this, they will get enemies, but the right kind of enemies. People you don't want as friends anyway.

They will also get the right kind of fans. People who don't just scroll past your post. They stop, they click, they like and they tell their friends.

This is called engagement and it's something that companies are ready to pay a lot of money for. But all they had to do, basically, was find their own value system and give voice to it.

Everything that we do comes from culture, from everyday life.

PREVIOUS PUBLICATIONS 01 CHRISTOPH NIEMANN Illustration Design 2009 02 MICHEL MALLARD Creative Direction 2009 03 FUN FACTORY Product Design 2009 04 ANDREAS UEBELE Signage Design 2010 05 HARRI PECCINOTTI Photography 2010 06 KUSTAA SAKSI Illustration Design 2010 07 5.5 DESIGNERS Product Design 2011 08 NIKLAUS TROXLER Graphic Design 2011 09 JOACHIM SAUTER Media Design 2011 10 MICHAEL JOHNSON Graphic Design 2011 11 ELVIS POMPILIO Fashion Design 2011 12 STEFAN DIEZ Industrial Design 2012 13 CHRISTIAN SCHNEIDER Sound Design 2012 14 MARIO LOMBARDO Editorial Design 2012 15 SAM HECHT Industrial Design 2012 16 SONJA STUMMERER & MARTIN HABLESREITER Food Design 2012 17 LERNERT & SANDER Art & Design 2013 18 MURAT GÜNAK Automotive Design 2013 19 NICOLAS BOURQUIN Editorial Design 2013 20 SISSEL TOLAAS Scent Design 2013 21 CHRISTOPHE PILLET Product Design 2013 22 MIRKO BORSCHE Editorial Design 2014 23 PAUL PRIESTMAN Transportation Design 2014 24 BRUCE DUCKWORTH Packaging Design 2014 25 ERIK SPIEKERMANN Graphic Design 2014 26 KLAUS-PETER SIEMSSEN Light Design 2014 27 EDUARDO AIRES Corporate Design 2015 28 PHILIPPE APELOIG Graphic Design 2015 29 ALEXANDRA MURRAY-LESLIE High Techne Fashion Design 2015 30 PLEIX Video & Installation Design 2016 31 LA FILLE D’O Fashion Design 2016 32 RUEDI BAUR Graphic Design 2016 33 ROMAIN URHAUSEN Product Design 2016 34 MR BINGO Illustration Design 2016 35 KIKI VAN EIJK Product Design 2016 36 JEAN-PAUL LESPAGNARD Fashion Design 2017 37 PE’L SCHLECHTER Graphic Design 2017 38 TIM JOHN & MARTIN SCHMITZ Scenography Design 2017 39 BROSMIND Illustration Design 2017 40 ARMANDO MILANI Graphic Design 2017 41 LAURA STRAßER Product Design 2017 42 PHOENIX DESIGN Industrial Design 2018 43 UWE R. BRÜCKNER Scenography Design 2018 44 BROUSSE & RUDDIGKEIT Design Code 2018 45 ISABELLE CHAPUIS Photography Design 2018 46 PATRICIA URQUIOLA Product Design 2018 47 SARAH-GRACE MANKARIOUS Art Direction 2018 48 STUDIO FEIXEN Visual Concepts 2019 49 FRANK RAUSCH Interface Design 2019 50 DENNIS LÜCK Designing Creativity 2019 51 IAN ANDERSON Graphic Design 2019 52 FOLCH STUDIO Strategic Narrative Design 2019 53 MARC TAMSCHICK Spatial Media Design 2020 54 TYPEJOCKEYS Type Design 2020 55 MOTH Animation Design 2021 56 JONAS LINDSTRÖM Photography 2021 57 VERONICA FUERTE Graphic Design 2021 58 CHRISTOPHE DE LA FONTAINE Product Design 2021 59 DAVID KAMP Sound Design 2021 60 THOMAS KURPPA Brand Design 2021 61 NEW TENDENCY Product Design 2022 62 MARTHA VON MAYDELL Illustration Design 2022 63 STUDIO KLARENBEEK & DROS Design Research 2022 64 JOUPIN GHAMSARI Photography Design 2022 65 LOTTERMANN AND FUENTES Photography Design 2022 66 SUPER TERRAIN Graphic Design 2022 67 EIKE KÖNIG Art Design 2023 68 CHRISTOPHER NOELLE Light Design 2023 69 DENNIS HINZE Sport Fashion Design 2023 70 KLASIEN VAN DE ZANDSCHULP Interactive Design 2023 71 VALENTIN VODEV Industrial Design 2023 72 GERMANS ERMICS Sculptural Design 2023 73 MADE BY JAMES Type & Logo Design 2024

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PUBLISHER Design Friends

COORDINATION Guido Kröger

LAYOUT Guido Kröger

INTERVIEW Mark Penfold

PRINT Imprimerie Schlimé

PRINT RUN 250 (Limited edition)

ISBN 978-2-919829-01-9

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This catalogue is published for the lecture of SNASK “Fuck the conservative world!” at Mudam Luxembourg on 27th of March, 2024 organised by Design Friends