The project began with “Trihouse,” which takes the three bars of Adidas’ logo and sets them diagonally into a foundation. Wiciak told Dezeen that the idea came to her accidentally when she just saw the shape of a building in the logo and realized the idea had potential. The concrete “bars” of the logo are divided by glass to create a spacious, open four-story home filled with natural light.

Wiciak’s plans place the kitchen, living room, dining room, recreation room, pantry, and a restroom on the Trihouse’s largest lower level, while the second floor offers quieter communal spaces like a study room. On the upper levels are the bedrooms and private bathrooms, though one does wonder if there’s any way to cover those enormous skylights to block out moonlight and early sunrises.

The cross shape of the Chevrolet logo naturally makes it well-suited as a home that’s elevated on some kind of plinth, either as a sort of observatory or as a remote residence set above a body of water. Wiciak envisions the latter for “Crosshouse,” with the face of the logo rendered as a glass facade. This two-story, 2,637 square-foot home is only accessible by boat and features private spaces like the bedroom in it’s darker back half, with shared social areas like the living room and library in the front.

“Rhombhouse” takes its diamond shape from the logo of car manufacturer Renault. Imposing and intimidating in its proportions, this tall, narrow structure looks a bit more like a Soviet monument than it does a home. Its four stories loom over a grassy landscape. About the same size as the Crosshouse, the Rhombhouse is more luxurious in its lofty shape than it is in its square footage.

Finally, there’s the pyramid-shaped “Pyrahouse,” based on the three triangles of the Mitsubishi logo. Two of the spaces between the triangles are filled in with glass, while the third is left open to the sand underneath. This fourth house features storage areas in the lower levels, a large, open-plan living space in the widest part of the home, and two private floors rising into the uppermost peak.

The use of corporate logos, concrete, and stark, minimalist shapes gives these houses a bit of an ominous feel, and it’s easy to imagine them as settings in a dystopian film that’s only a few steps removed from our current reality.

For Wiciak’s part, however, it seems that the series is less about corporate identity, politics, or economics than it is about potential overlap between graphic design and architecture. Wamhouse has already shown a predilection for unusual geometric houses made largely of concrete. “Pentahouse,” for example, is a single-family home consisting of extruded pentagons of various sizes connecting with and overlapping each other to create a shape reminiscent of a mountain range.

The post Warmhouse Studio’s Concrete Houses Take the Shapes of Iconic Corporate Logos first appeared on Dornob.

Skip the stylish brands on the shelves and overlook the stylized logos — this brand is speaking right to you in direct (and rather humorous) statements printed in simple font against bare one-color backgrounds. It’s a creative solution that proves graphic design doesn’t have to be flashy to be effective.

This is not exactly debranding in a pure sense, but close to it. The ‘logo’ – if it can be called that – is not in any special typeface and simply tells you the store name and web address. The ‘brand’ is built on sayings that are generic and overused to the point of being funny only when employed with this simple implied sarcasm.

Mucca Design (photos via EatMeDaily) wanted to do something different to make a local store stand out from its surroundings – and let you bring the sense of humor imbued in their packaging designs back home to stock in your own cupboards for future use.

By appealing to the trendy anti-brand movement these designers manage to blend kitsch, cliche and humor in a creative new way. This is a trend that might feel overplayed very soon, but for now, it’s fun and fresh, and might just get thousands of Brooklynites and tourists to stop at this little market instead of the mega store down the street.

“Mucca was asked to develop a brand strategy for a new gourmet market opening in Brooklyn. Our competitive analysis and neighborhood survey revealed that Brooklynites preferred the personal attention and service of local stores. So our branding strategy positioned this new grocery store as the go-to resource for the locals – one that was just as approachable as the bodega down the street.”

“Following a detailed naming process, we established an engaging copywriting tone that become the star of the brand. Its sharp, irreverent New York voice asserts itself across all applications, from digital to environmental.”

The post Simple, Literal & Logo-Free Debranding first appeared on Dornob.

The magazine, entitled LogoArchive, rounds up some of the most iconic (as well as a few lesser-known gems) mid-century brand identities and logos and puts them together in a handy zine that any lover of good design will be able to flick through with ease. LogoArchive originally started off as an Instagram account, which itself now boasts an impressive 126,000 followers. The magazine bills itself as “A study of form language in logo design. A recovery, research, and restoration project.” Both the magazine and the Instagram account are run by Richard Baird, a London-based designer. He says of the project: “I have been scanning and archiving logos for a long time, and I have a network of designers with whom I collaborate with, who have access to an invaluable volume of historical artifacts, in particular Christophe De Pelsemaker of LogoBooks and Blair Thomson of CanadaModern.”

The success of the Instagram page lies in its clear and crisp delivery, which sees the logos take center stage. Each individual logo is executed in white on a black background, with the information being placed entirely in the caption so that the image is not interrupted. This is the same strategy that’s employed for the magazine, which sees the white logos set against dark backgrounds, with four laid out in a minimal fashion on each page, the year and company listed in white in the top corners, and the designers listed at the bottom.

Speaking on the process of choosing which logos to include in the zine and on the Instagram account, Baird explains: “All the logos featured in the zine speak to me personally, be that in the conviviality of a metaphor, the retention of a distinction and memorability, or a clever take on a family symbol.”

Some of the logos chosen by Baird distill the essence of good graphic design with their clarity of communication. One of the most interesting and well executed logos is that of the Place Fleur-de-Lys Centre Commercial, designed by Claude Plante in 1972. To create the logo, Plante had to take the iconic image of the fleur-de-lys and rotate it 45 degrees to conjure up the shape of a bird.

Baird speaks of his fascination with this moment in graphic design, saying: “The formalization of corporate identity design was in its infancy during the mid-century. There were a lot of opportunities to keep logos simple and communicatively immediate without the potential of infringing on the trademarks of others.”

The first edition of the print version of LogoArchive was published in July 2018, and it sold out very quickly. The second edition of the zine is being released at the end of August and is available to reserve here.

The post New Magazine Celebrates Mid-Century Logo Design first appeared on Dornob.

Across languages and cultures, few symbols are so broadly recognized as those everyday bits of computer iconography that sit on screens around the world.

Still, the last thing we expect to see when someone pulls out a (paper) notebook or brings in the (physical) mail are those same familiar families of icons in ‘meatspace’ reality.

Brigada Creativa plays on this theme in a variety of direct and indirect ways via various graphic design products, including the aforementioned office and shipping materials but also ranging to posters, prints, calenders, logos and brands with patterns adopted from (or at least inspired by) computerized equivalents.

This mood poster is an excellent example, relying on our recognition of the ‘smiley face’ convention that is overdone, if anything, on the digital side of our lives … but using it to let you interactively report, track and display your daily state of mind offline.

The post Iconic Design: Digital Desktop Icons, Physical Applications first appeared on Dornob.