It's not the coughing that'll carry you off, but the coffin they carry you off in....

One of the more unusual briefs we've worked on recently came from JC Atkinson & Son, coffin & casket makers of County Durham.

JC Atkinson manufacture and distribute over 60,000 coffins a year from their factory in the North East. With a long heritage of producing beautifully crafted coffins from high quality materials they have, in recent years, also embraced new trends with a contemporary picture coffin range and also natural wool and wicker coffins.

The initial challenge for us was naming and branding JC Atkinson's traditional range of coffins to a target audience of predominantly funeral directors and trade. No easy task for the squeamish but we tackled the project with real enthusiasm — once we had distanced ourselves from end use of the product.

We settled on the name Heartwood with its symbolic notions of strength, life and er… death. The visual nod was to JC Atkinson's tradition of craft, heritage and care. We were really pleased with final outcome and the client was dead chuffed too.

www.parenthesis.co.uk