Aavalabs: The artisan of human code

Aavalabs started in 2011 with a homecoming. Otso Kääriäinen had spent three years travelling North America, Europe and Asia looking for direction, then found it at home. His M.D. mother had built a family business around health foods, supplements and vitamins. Online from day one, the range grew fast, mostly via Amazon, where dozens of brands make near-identical claims in near-identical words. Together we set a new strategy: values, purpose, competitive advantages and a positioning that gave Aavalabs words of its own – the artisan of human code, helping lovers of smarter not harder to live on level. The values (lighthearted, generous, tenacious) brought out a sharpened logo and a typographic approach with RB Multima set against HAL Four Grotesk. Ten colours in fixed gradient pairs were drawn from the hues of aava meri (an open sea) to colour-code the supplement packaging from everyday essentials to botanicals, sports and kids’ nutrition. The same three values hold together a passionate team spread across 15 countries, remote from the start and closer to its customers for it.