Interpreting innovation: Carme’s subversive, precise brand for FUTUR™ draws on its inspired offering

With a comprehensive cohort of collaborators – including Leonardo Marques developing the project’s sonic space, Missô Filmes shaping its motion output, and Simon Imanuel Lucas crafting its 3D production – São Paulo-based creative studio Carme’s identity for FUTUR™ is certainly comprehensive, to say the least. The overarching brand aptly captures the nature of the Hudson Valley-born sustainable start-up, which offers affordable, modular housing systems in the form of HÔM and ZÔM, each designed with eco-conscious, innovative materials and methods.

“From the start, our goal was to create an identity that could translate the great innovation of FUTUR™,” Creative Director Beto Guimarães tell us, all whilst maintaining a ‘warm, aspirational and humanised expression.’ “The sharp and angular shapes represent this,” Guimarães details, as seen in the futuristic wordmark, “and, at the same time, it avoids an ultra-technological, cold and distant expression,” the themes and aesthetic of which are typical of technology-focused industries. “The warm, aspirational and humanised side appears by overlaying these sharp and angular shapes with other elements,” he recalls, such as the brand’s compelling use of inviting, rounded graphic motifs and soft hues – the tones of which directly refer to the materials of FUTUR™’s homes. “It brings a light and cosy feeling,” Guimarães adds, “and the use of conceptual images of nature act as humanising agents of its visual universe,” coming together in a way emblematic of FUTUR™’s community focus.

“This attribute is conceptually translated into one of the main graphic elements of the identity, the FUTUR™ logo,” Creative Director & Graphic Designer Guilherme Marques tells us, explaining how the brand’s dedication to community bleeds throughout the visual language. “The logomark is composed of individual modules that create a stable and unique structure,” he continues, which then precisely conjoin to form a vibrant ecosystem. “Even though it is made up of unique and different individual elements,” Marques suggests, “the result is a harmonious, unique and balanced structure,” based on a bespoke cut of Displaay’s Ofform typeface. “It’s an extremely well-designed typeface that has, in its essence, the kind of contradiction we were looking for,” Marques expands, crafted with a striking tension between organic fluidity and practical structure. “We customised it by deconstructing the bases of the letters,” he continues, “transforming them into modules which, when regrouped, would give the impression of an ‘unicase,’” a combination of upper and lowercase letters which, innately, represent FUTUR™’s community. “It causes a ‘bold impact’ right away,” Marques recalls, culminating in a striking, symmetrical mark, unapologetic in its utopian tone.

Balancing the latter, Carme introduced Linotype’s Neue Haas Grotesk as the supporting typeface underlining the brand’s visual system, bringing a graphic harmony to more conceptually-led elements of the identity. “It was necessary to have a support font,” Guimarães explains, “that would help communicate ultra-technical, in-depth and complex information in a versatile way,” calling on the classic sans serif’s intrinsic functionality. “These attributes are easily perceived in Neue Haas Grotesk,” he continues, “a font that allows for easy and cosy reading,” regardless of its applied medium. “As well as this, it has a variety of weights that diversifies the possibilities of use,” Guimarães concludes, “and maintains visual unity in communication.”

Carme

FUTUR™