Pentagram gives Hiut a premium identity built on depth, not luxury

Hiut Denim Co. makes premium jeans in a family-run factory in Aberteifi, the Welsh coastal town also known as Cardigan. The place has a deep denim heritage: in the 1960s, its first jeans factory employed over 400 people and made over 35,000 pairs a week, until production moved offshore in 2002 and left decades of accumulated skill behind. Founded in 2011 to bring that skill home and train the next generation of makers, Hiut turned to Pentagram partner Hugh Miller for a new identity to help it tell that story. “The old identity served us incredibly well. It helped establish who we were and gave us a voice when we were a young brand trying to prove that making jeans in a small Welsh town was still possible,” recalls Johann von Loeper, Chief Executive Officer. As the business matured, it became more about the art of making than the underdog story of reassembling a factory, and Miller’s brief was to refine Hiut into a more elevated, premium expression that caught up with it. What the team wanted was something quieter, “a clearer version of ourselves.” “Premium has never meant luxury in the traditional sense. Premium means depth,” von Loeper explains. They sought an identity “built on substance rather than decoration” in which the factory, the makers and Aberteifi remain the heroes. At the centre of the identity is a redrawn wordmark. The original, set in a fairly neutral typeface beside the owl icon, gave Miller room to add character without losing its utilitarian feel. “Pattern-cutting shapes inspired the gutters and the junctions within the letterforms, giving the mark subtle personality – functional, but with more soul,” he details.