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ARCHITETTIVERONA is an Italian quarterly magazine that features impressive architecture design and skilled architects from the Verona area. Every two years they give awards to the most noteworthy local architecture projects, but recently the award ceremony has gained traction among the architecture world. What was once just a local acknowledgment of good architecture design is now a blossoming award of pride and prestige.
It is for this reason that ARCHITETTIVERONA turned to their long-time design studio partners at Happycentro to craft a such a special award prize and accompanying branding campaign. The two have worked side by side for years. According to Happycentro, they “were given ample room” as far as creative direction is concerned.
“For years we have followed the creative direction of the magazine,” says Happycentro, “and it was easy for us to find a solution that is consistent with the identity of the magazine.” Happycentro worked on entire restyling and rebranding process for the magazine about four years ago. It was only a matter of time before they were tasked with restyling the awards ceremony, too.
“With respect to how the award ceremony took place before our intervention, we changed almost everything,” says Happycentro. Typically, designers construct awards under the assumption that the value of the materials directly represents the value of the award. According to Happycentro, “often for the prizes, we use noble metals, crystal, lacquer, etc.” Unlike these typical prizes, ARCHITETTIVERONA’s architecture design awards were unique.
Happycentro wanted the award’s material-make-up to hold strong symbolic value. ARCHITETTIVERONA dedicates the award to the best designers and best projects in architecture. Therefore, Happycentro chose indispensable, age-old architectural materials like wood and concrete. “The idea of the concrete award came immediately,” recalls Happycentro. The design evolved “in a very instinctive way.”
ARCHITETTIVERONA quickly approved the designs, marking an uncharacteristically “short and fluid” design process. “We are very lucky!” exclaims Happycentro, who says everything went very smoothly. The visual language for the branded posters and folders was a natural extension of the architecture design style approved for the awards.
For inspiration, Happycentro turned to the classic Swiss design style, where “rationalism and cleanliness play a fundamental role.” The branding design created for this project drew influence from notable Italian and international designers such as Grignani, Lupi, Illiprandi, and Noorda. Interestingly enough, a 17-year-old nephew of one of Happycentro’s team members designed one of the poster illustrations!
“The studio was born in 1998 in Verona, the romantic city of Romeo and Juliet. In recent years we have worked with both big clients and tiny startups, for local agencies and major international companies. Our approach to design is always the same: designing a logo, an advertising page, a wall or directing a commercial offers the same opportunity to deal with a “problem to solve.”
Time by time, we have become quite good in doing it! Beside commissioned works, we spend plenty of energy in research and testing. Our formula is: Beauty = (Order/Complexity)•Sweat2. Our human diversities are our first resource that expresses itself in never-ending cross-links of different inputs, skills, passions, and styles.
We don’t like doing the same thing twice and prefer going further what we’re already able to do. It is tiring but satisfying. Stop Motion Animation, Tv/web commercials, Packaging, Visual art, Typography, Graphic design, Illustration, Music Videos, and Labels is what we do.”
Well, there it is. Another case study set in stone. Happycentro Design Studios showed some pretty “concrete” evidence that they know what they’re doing when it comes to design.
When they asked me if I was interested in writing up a Case Study on the ARCHITETTIVERONA project, I said “Wood I?”
Okay, I’ll stop with the puns. Most of the jokes landed like bricks anyway.
SPEAKING OF BRICKS, check out this case study on East Street Cider Co.!
Be a lot cooler if ya did
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