Part 1: A Thread about design in fashion (not fashion design)
An interview with Hugo Hoppmann, the designer behind Mugler's new star, Salomon's rebrand and PRESENT magazine
The word ‘design’ comes up a lot in fashion. Usually, we’re using it to refer to clothing. This week, I wanted to talk about another kind of design in fashion, namely graphic design and branding.
These days, brands rule fashion. It feels like brand perception and identity have become even more important than the clothes themselves, especially as the industry expands and becomes more corporate.
To learn more about the topic, I tapped the wisdom of two brilliant designers working across some of the industry’s most interesting brands and publications. As the interviews ended up being quite long, I’m going to spread them over two newsletters - one today and one tomorrow.
First up is Hugo Hoppmann, a designer who’s worked on logos and branding for Salomon, Lu’u Dan, Nike, Sies Marjan, Prada, Miu Miu and Kenzo. He’s also been working with Mugler since 2019, where he refined their wordmark and recently redesigned the house’s iconic star logo.
He also has his own magazine, PRESENT, an amazing publication focused on the creative process and encouraging anyone with an idea to ‘just get started’. I love the humanity he brings to PRESENT, covering themes like discipline, fear and confidence - plus he always features really interesting designers (including Lu’u Dan’s Hung La, Tareet and Santangelo).
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What was the first time you became aware of the importance of design (by which I mean graphics, typography, identity)? Was there a brand that really stood out to you?
For me, it started with sports. My first memory as a child is the Chicago Bulls logo. I was so fascinated by this logo, and drew hundreds of them. The bull always looks different - sometimes super angry, sometimes super friendly. I would also give them as gifts to my friends.
When you talk about an identity, what are the constituent parts of that?
A strong graphic identity serves as the visual essence of a brand, encapsulating its values, personality, and mission into a cohesive visual language. A few things come to mind: Recognition and memorability, emotional connection, communication of values, flexibility/scalability, consistency across platforms, “uniqueness” and differentiation in a crowded market.
The pillar for the visual identity is the typography. The type choice is the base, and also helps you figure out the right tone for the brand. For example, I had a fashion client where they didn't even have a name yet. We had 10 different name options, so for each one I made 10 versions in 10 different typefaces — this really helped us decide on the final name, because the different typefaces had such different meanings and feelings attached to them. That's the power of typography, which is an overlooked element sometimes.
In the end, it’s really about all the details. Today we have so many different mediums. So for example, I love doing websites. I think it’s often underestimated how much you can actually communicate through the website - not only the style but also the UX. How do the buttons behave? There are small brands who have incredible websites and then there are big brands who have quite hideous websites.
Georgia: Can you talk about the process of redesigning the Mugler star?
Alongside updating the Mugler wordmark, I was approached by Casey Cadwallader to redesign the star because he wanted to put his own spin on it. Those kind of elements are often a super delicate topic, because if you redesign a logo, it’s almost guaranteed that some people will hate it, because everyone’s so used to the old version and people get very attached to brands.
The process of creating the new star was really fun - projects like this are always really rewarding because I can sit down and actually sketch a lot of different things by hand. And with Casey, it's amazing because he is a creative and a designer himself. And he has very clear ideas and is also very good at thinking about graphic design. So he had a lot of sketches for the star already. So then it was kind of mix and match - I did sketches and then he gave me his sketches and we did a lot of different versions. Just iterating until we got the perfect one.
It can seem quite banal when I’m talking about it, because in the end, it's just a star. But of course, the process to get there is long until everyone is really happy and feels, “this is the perfect shape.” The goal was to have a star for Casey that represents “his” Mugler and what he’s trying to express.
Georgia: It's the equivalent of the modern art joke where people say, “Oh, my kid could have done that.” In the sense that it seems so simple, easy almost. But what appears optically like a very small change, is actually something that's so emotionally resonant. Those tiny details make such a difference.
I feel like in the last few years we've lived through this era of endless collabs, and obviously when you do a collaboration, your brand needs to be really strong in order to stand out and not be dominated by the other party. Do you feel like that's had an impact on branding trends? And are there other trends that you've noticed?
My first thought is that, let's say like six or eight years ago, there was this whole wave of redesigns of all big fashion brands where they radically stripped down: the killing of the serifs!
It was Bureau Borsche and their Balenciaga redesign, right? When everyone was trying to go a similar route.
You're probably right that it started with Balenciaga. If you google it there are these overviews where they put 10 brands from this redesigning period as before and after. And it's really crazy how about 80% of them got simplified to a simple sans-serif. I think this was also the time when Yves Saint Laurent became Saint Laurent.
I found this fascinating, and it's interesting that it now seems to be reversing back. It’s happening much faster than I thought it would. Burberry is a good example - they went from the old logo, then they simplified it, and now they're back to a modernised version of an old logo, plus the horse. I love this because it feels so much more expressive.
What do you do when you're working with a brand, and they don't know who they are? What are the kind of questions that you ask them to get them closer to knowing who they are, so that you can design the identity around that?
First of all my main focus is to listen closely to understand what the client really needs. Sometimes a good tactic I to ask to share stuff they don't like - what are the values of brands or styles and vibe that they don't feel connected to at all? For a lot of people it's easier to say what they don’t like than what they do like. Maybe because if you tell someone what you like, it's more exposing.
I also try to find the poles of the brand. If your brand is in the middle of the solar system, then what are the planets that are surrounding it that you feel connected to?
It also comes down to personal values. What Steve Jobs did with Apple is interesting, because it is a technology, but he mixed in his interest in Eastern philosophy, arts, calligraphy. He combined all his passions and ultimately that's what made Apple stand out. Apple was the first operating system with a focus on good design and great typography, with pre-installed quality typefaces for everyone to use. It spoke to creative people, and that’s still the core pillar of Apple – mixing technology and good taste. That’s what makes them unique.
That leads onto my last question, which is about PRESENT and how it informs your work. When you work with so many clients, how do you decide on your own style?
The thing with PRESENT and its graphic language is that the topics that I'm talking about with the project — creative psychology, how we work, mindfulness, philosophy — content about all these topics often looks pretty badly designed. One of things I want to do with PRESENT is to package these topics that I find super valuable and share them in a way that’s more attractive, easier to consume and fun for my peers and my community. I try to find a graphic language that’s more appealing and also more approachable. It can sometimes be difficult to identify with these topics, because we might have prejudices and preconceived images in mind. Meditation is a good example of this - a lot of people still link it directly to esoteric imagery and everything that comes with it. And visually I think a lot of people are put off by that. It’s a pity that people are just distracted by basically bad branding.
I did an interview earlier this year with Martina Tiefenthaler - she was the chief creative officer at Balenciaga, but we were discussing her project called Vegan4000. She said a similar thing - that vegan restaurants are associated with a ‘vegan’ aesthetic. And obviously she's someone with a strong, compelling design sensibility. So with Vegan4000, she’s trying to ‘rebrand’ veganism to make it feel more modern and exciting, like her work in fashion.
Exactly! For me with PRESENT, it's similar. All these topics that are usually packaged in a different way, I want to make them more sexy, or closer to my vision of good design. It’s a way of packaging them differently and putting my own spin on it.
How long should a good brand identity last? 10 years, 20 years, five years?
That's tough. Ideally, timeless, forever. But that being said, looking at PRESENT, it’s also changing all the time. We're learning the whole time. Life is not stagnant and not static. So I think it's actually pretty unrealistic, timelessness in this way.
I feel like if a brand is getting redesigned, it means that the brand is questioning itself, and I think that's a good thing. Of course though, I'm fascinated by branding that is graphically so powerful that it lasts a long time.
Is there a brand that springs to mind when you think of that?
I’d say something like the Mercedes star, the Nike swoosh. But for fashion, it’s often tied to a specific phase or timeline or decade, and I think it's good to adapt to the times. It really depends on the brand. Most of the time it’s the simplest designs which last a long time - something like the peace sign, this is the ultimate logo. The yin and yang. The Christian cross is basically the logo of the Christian church.
God is a great graphic designer!
Join PRESENT’s community here, subscribe on Substack, and visit Hugo’s website here.
Threads of the week
New boots! I found these amazing riding boots on Depop, designed by my super talented friend Leonie Barth for COS a few seasons ago. L-R: worn with a Total Luxury Spa longsleeve and Nike shorts, then with a vintage ice hockey jersey and jorts customised by Chloe Baines, finally with a Hanes tank and some vintage running shorts.
Loose Threads
I’ve been sick this weekend, but managed to do some reading and watching (and scrolling).
A film I enjoyed on Mubi was ‘The African Desperate’ by artist Martine Syms. The story is a satire of Syms’ own experience at art school, and the film is set across a 24-hour period (Syms said she was inspired by the time constraints of movies like Run Lola Run). Speaking of design, the credits and typography by Special Offer Inc are amazing.
Two books I finished: ‘All Fours’ by Miranda July. If you’ve read it, please make yourself known in the comments!! I need to talk about it - the epitome of the head-exploding emoji.
Secondly, ‘New Methods for Women’ by Sharmadean Reid. It feels like all the best self-help and business books melted down and reconstituted into an actionable, modern compendium of advice and tools for work and life. Sharmadean is a real inspiration.
The perfect TikTok does not exi…
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this is influencing me to give into the All Fours hype
I read All Fours! It requires a massive book club session!