Boston-based design powerhouse Hacin marked its 30th anniversary in style, earning a Gold in the Graphis Design 2024 competition with a striking boxed set of marketing books as bold as their portfolio. Created in collaboration with designer Michele Snow, this self-initiated project is more than a retrospective—it’s a tactile celebration of Hacin’s multidisciplinary magic across architecture, interior design, and visual identity. With die-cut, foil-stamped covers and a sleek slipcase, the set captures the studio’s signature aesthetic while doubling as a standout piece for coffee tables and client pitches alike. It’s a testament to Hacin’s commitment to craft, collaboration, and a future as bright as their past.
By Katie Dayton, Communications Manager, & Emily Neumann, Art Director & Associate, Hacin
To celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of Hacin, a Boston-based design firm, the team’s own visual identity and communications departments, along with designer Michele Snow, collaborated to create a limited edition boxed set of four marketing books showcasing the studio’s work across project types, as well as their culture as a collective. Hacin’s interdisciplinary practice engages three disciplines—architecture, interior design, and visual identity—with a team that works on projects across all types of industries and locations. The goal from the outset was to illustrate the studio’s dynamic portfolio in an exciting and fresh way while making it easy to share with a client by project genre or as a holistic collection of work. The boxed set includes three die-cut, foil-stamped, perfect-bound books detailing the company’s most significant private residential, housing, hospitality, and workplace projects, as well as a stitched brochure highlighting the studio’s process, identity, and services. All four books are housed in a printed and laminated slipcase produced by Friend Box in collaboration with the printer Puritan Capital.
Featuring projects spanning decades, located in Boston and across the US, the set provides a collection of Hacin’s most celebrated work for this milestone anniversary. The portfolio books aimed to highlight the team’s landmark architecture, interior design, and visual identity projects and celebrate the collaborators and clients who helped bring them to fruition in a vibrant and tactile way that could last for decades. The timeline of this project, from initial concept to production, was completed in six months. The final pieces had a multi-use intended audience, with recipients ranging from business development and public relations contacts to longtime clients and project partners.
The production of these books included close collaboration with graphic designer Michele Snow and print provider Puritan Capital. Professional photography, sketches, plans, diagrams, materials palettes, collages, and copy were curated to present a comprehensive view of each featured project. In-depth reviews of precedent designs and stock, foil, and box construction options took place to ensure that the materials utilized were cohesive, tactile, structurally sound, and striking in their own right. The intended message of this boxed set was both a promotion of the team’s collective talent, experience, and beautiful work, as well as one of appreciation and gratitude for Hacin’s history and the collaborators who helped make it possible.
While the piece is meant to serve as a collection of the studio’s work, it is also a beautiful keepsake for libraries and coffee tables. The sets were used primarily as gifts and promotional pieces, allowing the firm to strengthen connections, tell the brand story in an engaging way, and connect with clients, past and present. The books also provided a useful marketing tool in the business development and public relations realm, assisting in growing the firm’s reach and audience.
Katie Dayton (below, left) and Emily Neumann (below, right) head Hacin’s communications and visual identity departments, working together to conceptualize firm marketing and branding initiatives for web, social, and print collateral. Katie started at Hacin in 2021 and has a deep knowledge and expertise in the print and visual communication worlds. Emily joined the studio in 2014 to lead the visual identity practice, with a multidisciplinary background that includes graphic design, photography, and architectural design. Her award-winning portfolio extends past Hacin’s own brand into visual identity design for hospitality, commercial, and residential clients of the firm.
