Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole
- Client Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole
- Project Visual Identity, Publications
- Year 2002-
Tool Box for Architects
How do you sleep the night before presenting a visual identity to a school that educates people that see themselves as standard-bearers of the ultimate standards of aestethics, live in apartments where the only furniture allowed is one beautiful chair per inhabitant, who distinguish between 12 different shades of grey and to whom a staircase is denoted 'a vertical connection between two horizontal planes'?
In 2002 e-Types won the competition on development of a new visual identity for the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Copenhagen.
Tool Box Design
The visual identity for the School of Architecture provides its creative users with a lot of free space by supplying them with a large and consistent tool box of graphic elements that can be applied in innumerable variations. With time, the visual identity is pre-programmed to change along with the School of Architecture and be further developed by those who use the design in their every day work - including the school's students and teachers.
Human Form
The School of Architecture is held together by a perspective on architecture that stresses a balance between art and function with the individual human being at its center.
This mode of thinking is also characteristic for the new visual identity. The visual identity is more than anything a visual landscape with a unique tone and style that permeates the individual elements. The visual identity supports the School of Architecture's communications hierarchy. The redesigned official seal works together with one of the four typefaces designed specifically for the School of Architecture as the anchor in the official communication of the school. But as the communication moves from the official offices of the administration to the school's study departments, exhibitions and projects a number of additional design elements are added.
These elements enable the user of the design to work towards an individual expression. In this way the design created for the Royal Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture not only takes the strategy and identityof the school into account. It actually supportsand embodies the school's view of the world.
Logo or...?
The seal of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts was the identity-carrying element in the previous visual identity of the School of Architecture.
The seal of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts was the identity-carrying element in the previous visual identity of the School of Architecture.
The seal is a symbol from a time when limited access to resources made it necessary to express identity in few, but very powerful symbols. Symbols that in many cases
were to be produced by means of a seal ring. It is ironic that these practical circumstances have made their mark through history and even to he 1980sand 1990s where the technical options make
graphic identity into a question of many more elements, but where the logo still stood as the central, defining element.
Maybe this is so because the idea that logo equals identity walks hand in hand with the idea of identity as a still image, a state. This idea is in part born out of
the Romantic periods ideas about the perfect state. In part it is also dictated by a practical argument, in that graphic identity in most companies and organizations has to be 100% centrally
conceived - A centralized decision that is to ensure a unified style of expression when the company communicates externally as well as internally.
In the case of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture, both arguments are invalid. The school has long time ago done away with the romantic search for
the perfect condition. And the school because of its students, teachers, researchers and staff has an enormous resource in term of creative power that would make it counterproductive to try and
lock the school don in only one expression of the identity.
Malleable Identity
An identity - whether it is the identity of a country, a company or a school of architecture, has fixed and malleable elements. Parts of the identity can be traced back to the creators or founders of the craft, corporation or educational institution. Other parts are changed continuously. In companies 60 percent of the identity is often claimed to be fixed while 40 percent is subject o constant change. In the case of the School of Architecture this 60/40 ratio is more likely to be a 40/60 ratio. With continuous changes in staff and students with very strongly held opinions and a high level of visual and aestethic intelligence, the continuous production of visual expressions are the production of identity in and of itself.
An identity - whether it is the identity of a country, a company or a school of architecture, has fixed and malleable elements. Parts of the identity can be traced back to the creators or founders of the craft, corporation or educational institution. Other parts are changed continuously. In companies 60 percent of the identity is often claimed to be fixed while 40 percent is subject o constant change. In the case of the School of Architecture this 60/40 ratio is more likely to be a 40/60 ratio. With continuous changes in staff and students with very strongly held opinions and a high level of visual and aestethic intelligence, the continuous production of visual expressions are the production of identity in and of itself.
Identity at the School of Architecture is not fixed, but processual. The production of the school's and students graphic material is therefore part of the continuous
creation of a sense of identity, aspiration and belonging.
Projects
Since the launch of the visual identity in 2002, e-Types has worked with the School of Architectue on a range of projects, among them an internal newspaper 'Copy', a selection of book son studies, research and exhibitions as well as diplomas, templates for a variety of purposes and stationary of exquisite quality - as it should be.
Projects
Since the launch of the visual identity in 2002, e-Types has worked with the School of Architectue on a range of projects, among them an internal newspaper 'Copy', a selection of book son studies, research and exhibitions as well as diplomas, templates for a variety of purposes and stationary of exquisite quality - as it should be.
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