Construct has created the branding for YOO Home, a new collection of interior products curated and designed by YOO - the internationally renowned residential and hotel design company co-founded by French product designer Philippe Starck and entrepreneur John Hitchcox.
The brand identity is conceived as a unifying visual umbrella for the aesthetically varied furniture and accessories. Original furniture designed by YOO Home sits alongside a curated selection from iconic design houses including Boffi, Cappellini, Cassina, Droog, Flos, Fritz Hansen, Moooi, Nani Marquina, Poltrona Frau, Zanotta, and show-stopping pieces from Sean Dare, Bethan Gray and Jon Male. YOO Home offers the entire collection across four key themes: Classic, Nature, Minimal and Culture.
The YOO Home identity is anchored to the existing YOO logotype, with its lower-case twist on the classic typeface Futura. The addition of the word 'home' has been achieved with typographic precision so as to retain the balance and elegance of the original. A protected and defined area of clear space ensures that the new mark is never crowded out but asserts its authority wherever it appears. Brand patterning that is amplified by a wide range of digital, print and physical applications, gives the new identity presence without overshadowing the visually arresting, often colourful products.
"The quality and diversity of the YOO Home product was a real challenge for us in creating an identity and brand palette for this latest incarnation of YOO," commented Georgia Fendley, Founder and Creative Director, Construct. "We refined the core brand marque and developed a dot repeat pattern that can work at a variety of scales, in two and three dimensions, embossed and as laser cut holes. This structure can be functional or decorative and the change in visual pace ensures the identity is lively and engaging while always keeping the product as hero. The colour and materials palette is both industrial and warm, with tactile finishes and a transparency of process which celebrates craft."
The YOO Home logotype comes in three variants: as a stand-alone word-mark, as a word- mark in a roundel, and as a lock-up with a geometric pattern created from the counter of the 'O'. Here and elsewhere the identity plays with the positive and negative shapes inspired by the letter. A palette of materials and processes has been developed for use across all applications with their use and combinations dictated by a carefully considered set of brand guidelines.
On print and in digital form, the logotype is manipulated by blind debossing, clear and white foiling and black printing. A palette of white, black and a rich array of greys (from charcoal to ash) combine with a variety of materials, print finishes and techniques to provide functional clarity for information and arresting surprises for promotional items.
The scale of the O-based brand pattern changes from one application to another with purpose: printed large it provides a frame to highlight product images on advertising and the website; pixel-sized, it creates a textured background on information sheets; as a cut-out, it is a porthole on product information sleeves and on swatches it is a window to touch and feel fabrics. It is both decorative and functional, from tactile perforations on product tags and foiled polka dot pattern on invitations to a 'magnifying glass' device on assembly instructions. It even takes on physical form as a metal paper-clip, as a stamp of quality on furniture, and as bold in-store signage.