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Archtober stands as a year-round celebration of architecture and design, fostering a deep connection between communities and the built environment. Established in 2010 as an annual month-long festival, this platform has evolved into a resource for happenings in NYC. Collaborating with an extensive network of partners, Archtober presents an array of events that include tours, lectures, workshops, panels, and exhibitions.
2020 marked the festival’s 10th anniversary and to celebrate this momentous milestone the team sought a new perspective with a NYC-based agency to create a distinct visual identity and website.
However, a month into signing on for the project, we were thrown a curve ball. The world was hit by a global pandemic, forcing the festival to pivot from its tried and true in-person event to a fully virtual experience. Our collective objective was to design an experience that felt vibrantly celebratory that could bring us together, even when we were all physically apart.
We started by crafting a concept for the year's theme. We asked ourselves, how can we honor the festival’s history while looking ahead to the possibilities of the next decade? While researching the previous festivals we started cataloging shapes and forms that represented each year. Then we simplified them into rudimentary forms that would act as our building blocks.
Pulling inspiration from axonometric drawings of architects, we created a visual library of 3-dimensional building blocks that could be organized vertically to create infinite "buildings".
This visual motif carried through the whole brand, not only creating dynamic illustrations with motion that celebrated the building process but also in the logo design as well. We transformed the logo into an isometric, three-dimensional form that anchored the imagined cityscape around it. This logo maintained the core elements of the original, the Archtober name catty-cornered inside a rectangle, while playing into a new visual system.
Our design maintained yellow as the core color, honoring Archtober's consistent brand identity from previous years. We also expanded the palette including 5 more vibrant colors. These colors not only added a joyful look to the artwork; they were used strategically to color-code each week of the festival calendar, making it easier for attendees to navigate the schedule and engage with the festival’s offerings.
Archtober can not exist without its backdrop, NYC. To bring the design to life and imply scale to our scalable forms, we brought NYC into the mix with tiny stylized figures and elements interwoven into the compositions. These additions included little NYC characters and iconic New York mainstays like pigeons, fire hydrants, and taxis, adding a layer of depth and storytelling. The resulting artwork was playful, familiar, and whimsical.
Working with Greater for the past five years has changed how we think about collaboration. Alex and Jon have repeatedly gone above and beyond to help shape how we think about our own work and what Archtober can achieve, helping us expand and improve not only our outputs but our internal workflows and processes.
