The Manufactory’s identification attracts on the design heritage of the Heal’s atelier and constructing to draw a brand new technology of artistic companies.
DNCO has developed the title, model technique and model identification for The Manufactory, a set of restored buildings on the Tottenham Court docket Highway website house to furnishings firm Heal’s for over 200 years.
Within the combined artistic reuse growth by Normal Tasks in partnership with traders KKR and designers Buckley Grey Yeoman, Heal’s will retain a flagship retailer throughout the Grade II* listed constructing redesigned for the corporate by Cecil Brewer in 1916. The higher flooring and a former mattress manufacturing unit will turn into workplace house for The Manufactory, with a public-facing cafe and gallery positioned within the retailer’s former loading bays in Alfred Mews.
The Manufactory goals to draw “the following technology of tech and artistic companies”, says DNCO strategist Brenda Sjahrial. “We had the chance to show an iconic design and furniture-making establishment into an equally thrilling place for work,” she says.
Working with Normal Tasks, a model was developed that “respects the place’s heritage whereas [being] daring sufficient to face by itself”, Sjahrial explains. Launched this week, it’s within the means of being utilized throughout on-site and on-line purposes together with signage, wayfinding, web site and social media campaigns.
Senior designer Arianna Tilche explains that DNCO needed to have fun Heal’s historical past as “a spot of craft and making” with design that “echoes this meticulous strategy”.
A brand new typeface, Rouleur by Good Kind Foundry, was chosen “to acknowledge the constructing’s previous with out changing into a pastiche”, Tilche says. Its “tall x-height and expanded characters” supplied a “very robust up to date presence, “whereas nodding to Heal’s craft heritage by way of the gentle, rounded painterly particulars on sure letters just like the R”.
Its utilization, in the meantime, was impressed by “robust borders with recognisable thick guidelines” present in Heal’s archive posters and ads, Tilche says.
“Taking inspiration from this design language, we developed a typographic strategy that frames and creates a container for content material. We additionally launched a extra fluid strategy the place phrases weave themselves round and thru the content material itself”, she provides.
Colors are drawn from the constructing itself, taking a darkish purple from an accent throughout the façade tiles, gold and brass tones impressed by brass detailing within the joinery and vivid purple entrance signage from “outdated industrial hand-painted indicators” discovered “forgotten in some corners of the constructing”, Tilche explains.
Heal’s cat mascot – impressed by the bronze statue on Heal’s spiral staircase – can be adopted for The Manufactory. Illustrator Abbey Lossing visualised the cat across the constructing “popping outside, sleeping in a nook on the steps, climbing on a windowsill”, giving the identification a “playful really feel”, Tilche says.
A line drawing by illustrator William Luz is used throughout web site, tech packs and promotional supplies to make sense of the buildings on the location.
“The Heal’s constructing, though simply recognisable from the skin, is an especially sophisticated assortment of buildings that have been patched collectively by way of the years”, Tilche says.
The “intricate, but playful” line drawing not solely reveals the totally different buildings and their entrances, however “does so with an uplifting character that reveals the buzzing life inside”, she explains.
Tilche provides that “The identical playful strategy applies to the web site design, the place the cursor follows you thru the display screen, wrapping round itself and even providing you with the chance to get up the sleeping cat on the backside of the display screen should you so want.”
Additional to the roll out throughout exterior wayfinding, façade, on-floor advertising and marketing, web site and social media campaigns, DNCO is presently engaged on inside wayfinding and future campaigns.
