Our latest assignment from Touchstone Climbing was to redesign the identity for Berkeley Ironworks, the East Bay indoor climbing gym that opened in 2000. The gear is a reference to ironworks, of course—the gym’s original logo featured three gears—and the yin and yang design alludes to Berkeley’s reputation for alternative or non-conformist thinking.

The symbol was carefully inked to determine the relationships between the positive and negative forms; line weights were optically adjusted to ensure that the individual elements contributed to a balanced and harmonious whole.

We designed a distinctive T monogram within an eight-pointed star to identify the new Sacramento microbrewery Touchstone Brewing Co. The construction of the monogram is based on a series of nested squares: one for the T, and two for the eight-pointed star (with one square rotated 45°). The mildly explosive process of fermentation is suggested by the outwardly expanding star and the surrounding pattern of beer bubbles.

We look forward to sampling the product when the brewery launches. Cheers!

Sacramento Pipeworks is a Northern California indoor rock climbing gym, with 40-foot walls and 11,000 square feet of climbing terrain. Originally opened by Touchstone Climbing in 2001, we were hired to redesign the gym identity.

Housed in a former pipeworks, the trademark is decidedly industrial, with a “machine shop” skull and crossbones. Our custom typography is a nod to the idea of pipes and the bending of pipes, and was inspired by a typeface lettered by German designer Max Körner in the late 1940’s.

Located next door to Pipeworks will be Pintworks, a taproom serving craft beers brewed by Touchstone Brewing Co. The Pintworks identity is a riff on Pipeworks, with a drop of beer replacing the nut over crossed wrenches.

The wordmark we designed for Farmhouse Modern is based on the hot-metal typeface Hispalis Bold Titling. We don’t know who designed Hispalis or when it was originally released, but we assume it dates from the first half of the 20th century. Hispalis was issued by the Spanish foundry Nacional.

After inking several of the letters—the easier ones!—and rendering the forms in Adobe Illustrator, we worked with Rod Cavazos and his team at Psy/Ops to build out the final wordmark. Rod’s typographic expertise was much appreciated!

We think our revival of Hispalis embodies the dualities embodied by Farmhouse Modern: old vs. new, rural vs. urban, nature vs. design and, in some sense, female vs. male.

Farmhouse Modern is a website and quarterly magazine that celebrates a simple but refined aesthetic for the home. We developed both a wordmark and monogram—the latter specifically so that Farmhouse Modern can discreetly brand a range of custom products sold on its website.

The FM monogram we created is designed for maximum usability. Comprising only four disconnected lines, the mark is easily stenciled or sandblasted, as well as molded, embossed, embroidered, or printed. It also works well on-screen, and is legible at a size of less than 1/8″ in print.

The dimensional nature of this lowercase letter “a” monogram—comprising surface, volume, interior, and exterior—speaks to Arcsine’s comprehensive architectural practice. The subtext of this design is one of perception and, by extension, vision. The Arcsine wordmark is based on a face by Swiss designer Walter Käch and published in his book Schriften Lettering Ecritures in 1949.

The design of the Arcsine monogram came through an iterative sketching process. The form of the letter originates in the triskelion, an ancient “three-legged” glyph that symbolized progress and victory to the Greeks.

In his 1952 essay “On Trademarks,” Herbert Bayer refers to the trademark as a form of “pictorial stenography.” A good trademark is glyphic, and functions as visual shorthand for the client’s product or service. Our MC monogram for Mission Cliffs in San Francisco exemplifies this approach.

As I tell my students at CCA, the trick is to create a mark that is simultaneously simple but distinctive; that reproduces well in one color at less than half an inch, but that nonetheless pulls the eye and engages the mind. Here are two applications of the Mission Cliffs identity at extreme scales in size: lit signage above street level, and dumbbells.

A warm “thank you” to former student Sarah Devyani King for letting us use her photo of our signage! [MF]