Pomppas colorful and vivid Hippa pattern was born on a bus ride from Berlin to Rostock and on the Helsinki regional train.
The designer of Pomppa’s new Hippa print, Sanni Kariniemi, is not only a bronze medallist in the Agility World Championships 2016 and Finnish Champion 2017, but also an illustrator and graphic designer. Sanni’s works feature Finnish nature and folklore as well as graphic and geometric shapes.
In early 2016, Pomppa’s founder and designer, Meri Alku, was planning the colours for the new collection and suddenly had an epiphany: In addition to the new colours, Pomppa coats would be offered with a print design! She promptly sent an e-mail to Sanni, and so the plan was in motion.
– Hippa represents an adventure in the Finnish forest from the dog’s perspective, Sanni explains. I suggested a forest theme for the print, with all kinds of things dogs love and the sort of things you may encounter in the forest. Dogs love to keep an eye on animals like ducks and squirrels.
Sanni drew Hippa on the bus between Berlin and Rostock, on the regional train back home in Finland and by her desk. She scanned the inked-in drawings as they were, then finalised the work by adjusting and colouring the drawings on her computer. – My working method is to just draw, without planning ahead. I then see what comes out of it and pick out the nicest sketches.
According to Sanni, the design process for Hippa was easy; only the colours were somewhat demanding. Meri had requested cheerful, bright colours. In addition, the print had to be a good match with the other colours of the collection, orange, petrol, plum and graphite.
– Choosing the colours was easy, but getting them to print on the fabric as they should was pretty challenging, Sanni describes. Indeed, during the production phase, it took four test rounds before the printed colours matched the colours of the planned design.
– Otherwise the project was pure fun! Meri gave Hippa the green light immediately after the seeing the first sketch, and it only took a little fine-tuning to get it ready to go, Sanni describes. – We began to think about the name once the print was ready. In addition to Hippa (Finnish for game of tag), other candidates included Riehu (excitement), Polku (trail), Loikka (jump, leap), Käpy (cone) and Skutta (Helsinki slang for forest).
What about Sanni’s own dogs, Shelties Goa, Stig and Luigi; do they wear HippaPomppa? – Of course! It will be our go-to coat during autumn and winter!
