KUKKIA

Creative Product Photography

The brief

Kukkia is a wooden toy company based in Osaka, Japan, which creates beautiful toys from natural products that are gentle to the environment and encourage children to learn and discover while they play. Kukkia means ‘to bloom’ in Finnish, and ‘Kuki’ means stem in Japanese. The company has evolved since and has changed to kiko+gg.

Kukkia is the brainchild of designer Kaz Shiomi, who I met at the time of the company’s eighth anniversary. Since then, we have collaborated on numerous shoots in London and Osaka, creating imagery for the growing European market. The children absolutely loved being part of the shoots, and I really enjoyed photographing the gorgeous toys.

The Solution

Using Sheen House as the location, we shot a variety of lifestyle images where children were playing with the wooden toys. The result was a stunning collection of over 100 lifestyle product photography shots, which were used on the Kukkia website, in marketing communications, as well as in social media over a few years.