The archive · Design & Visual · Product decision · 2024–2025
Tameko makes its packaging behave like fabric — a D&AD Yellow Pencil identity
A new Danish textile house wrapped its boxes in paper that creases and folds like cloth, and won D&AD 2025's Yellow Pencil for the idea.
Tameko
What it had to solve
Tameko, founded in Copenhagen in 2021 by Dominika Leveau and Chim Sonne-Schmidt, makes plain, natural textiles for bed, table and home — restrained linen and cotton pieces built to last. For its brand and packaging it needed depth and personality without shouting over products that were deliberately understated.
How it works
Tameko, founded in Copenhagen in 2021 by Dominika Leveau and Chim Sonne-Schmidt, makes natural linen and cotton textiles for bed, table and home — restrained pieces built to last. For the brand and its packaging, the brief was to complement that minimalist collection while giving the company a depth and personality of its own.
London studio DutchScot anchored the identity in typewriter art, a largely forgotten craft where images are built from letters and negative spacing. A bespoke version of the Cast foundry's Xanti Typewriter became the brand's single typeface, and copywriter Nick Asbury made words behave like threads so letters form patterns and patterns read as text.
The idea travelled onto the boxes: Copenhagen packager Elvo 1923 screen printed intricate patterns by hand so the packaging appears to wrap, crease, fold and even tumble like fabric. The result was an archival, utilitarian print quality that made the plainest unboxing feel like handling the goods themselves.
With one typeface, one concept and a strictly monochrome palette, the identity earned Tameko a Yellow Pencil plus Graphite and Wood Pencils at the 2025 D&AD Awards, and features in design publications such as BP&O. The packaging became the brand's first physical proof: fabric that wraps before you even reach the textile.
Why it lands
- Textiles are sold by feel, and packaging that creases and folds like cloth extends that tactile promise to the moment of delivery.
- Typewriter art is a forgotten medium, so the identity looks unlike every other muted Scandi-brand refresh while staying faithful to restrained minimalism.
- One bespoke monospaced typeface gave every touchpoint a consistent texture — letters become weaving, so branding and product never compete.
- Hand screen printing by a Copenhagen maker matched the brand's craft values and turned mass-produced boxes into something archival and collectible.
What it did
The identity gave a young label an original visual voice in a crowded Scandi-homeware field — one concept, one typeface and a monochrome palette applied from print to packaging. It won Yellow, Graphite and Wood Pencils at the 2025 D&AD Awards and drew features from design press such as BP&O, with the packaging itself doing the selling before anyone touched a pillowcase.
What you can take
When a brand's packaging physically behaves like its product — paper that folds like cloth — the unboxing becomes the first honest proof of what the company makes.
Since then
The identity launched with Tameko's early collections in late 2024 and kept working as the brand grew into international retail through stockists such as Finnish Design Shop. Design press read it as a masterclass in giving minimalism personality — BP&O called the typography 'brilliantly original' — and at the D&AD Awards 2025 the packaging work took a Yellow Pencil with a Graphite and a Wood Pencil alongside it, an unusually strong haul for a label not yet four years old.
Sources
- Tameko — D&AD Awards archive
- New Logo & Branding for Tameko by DutchScot
- Tameko — visuelle
- Her er de danske D&AD-vindere
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