How Studio Gruhl created a visual world for REDSOFA, marking a new era for the recruitment company 

REDSOFA prides itself on being the very first ‘Recruitment+’ company, expanding its offering beyond industry-leading recruitment to include creative content, brand partnerships, an educational platform, and more. To mark the occasion, Studio Gruhl were invited to develop a new brand identity and website for the London, Berlin and Amsterdam-based company. “One key aspect of our visual approach at Studio Gruhl is that everything we design is rooted in the digital space,” Design & Creative Director Malte Gruhl tells us of the resulting digital-first approach. “We carefully consider how the logo scales across different viewports, how social media posts will look, and how motion can seamlessly transition from the website to an Instagram story to a digital out-of-home experience,” he adds. 

According to Gruhl, the visual approach behind the REDSOFA brand was very strategy-driven. “Besides being a recruitment company,” he continues, “they also aspired to establish a platform where they could interview their talents and allow them to share their experiences in the industry and showcase their work.” Studio Gruhl’s job, therefore, was to express this duality. This has been achieved through a flexible, modular and unifying visual language that not only represents REDSOFA’s many offerings, but does so in a way that allows for creative expression and evolution.

To establish the brand’s foundation, the team opted for Nizar Kazan’s Lausanne as the leading typeface – a versatile, sophisticated, and precise sans serif. “We wanted a typeface that could serve as the backbone of the brand, instilling confidence without overpowering it,” Gruhl remarks. 

Building upon this, the studio introduce a series of vibrant 3D illustrations, elevating REDSOFA’s content and outputs when used as stand-alone icons or full backgrounds. “Each symbol has some reference to the creative profession or adds a quirky touch,” Gruhl reveals. “We firmly believe that it is essential to launch a brand with ready-to-use content. Consequently, we provided a toolkit that allows REDSOFA to easily get started and have enough visual assets to bring the brand to life.”

Studio Gruhl

REDSOFA