Umano Brand Identity by Ruis Vargas is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2021 A' Design Award in Graphics, Illustration and Visual Communication Design Competition Category.

IronGraphic· 2021

Umano Brand Identity

by Ruis Vargas

Client: Laika

A' Design Award Winner in Graphic Category

12,725

Verified Award Winner

Verify Award Status for #116954

Visit Site View at A' Design Award Press Release Award Badge

Colors

The Design

About Umano Brand Identity

Umano is a brand identity created for a hotel bar in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The identity draws on cultural anthropophagy, a literary concept that joins humor with the free reinterpretation of outside influences. The project includes a logotype, business cards on 300 gram offset paper, a menu, a bag, surface design and posters printed on 75 gram offset paper and glued to interior walls. Graphics and architecture combine to form visual narratives that reinterpret city sights and local poems. The aim is to move away from the formal tone of traditional hotel bars.

The Recognition

About the A' Design Award

Umano Brand Identity is an Iron A' Design Award winner, a prestigious recognition granted to good designs that meet the professional and industrial requirements expected from well-designed creations. Iron winners demonstrate great skill, high specialization, expert understanding, and creative capacity of their creators. Umano Brand Identity is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished creation that is practical and innovative. This Iron A' Design Award-winning design integrates industry best practices and has competent technical characteristics linked with know-how and talent. Umano Brand Identity is respected for its thoroughness and is designed to provide quality of life improvements that help make the world a better place.

Image Analysis

Color Temperature: WarmSymmetry: Both DirectionsBackground: Left and Right

Behind the Design

Press Kit

Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.

Unique Properties: Sao Paulo bears the stigma of being a serious and unwelcoming city and their resident is reputed to be less than hospitable. However, since the beginning of the 20th century, there has been a cultural tradition in the city permeated by a sense of humor and artistic invention. Cultural anthropophagy is a product of this. The Umano name and identity project is a break from the traditional seriousness of hotels - a materialized rupture, physically and graphically.
Dimensions & Packaging: Poster sheet format 420 mm x 620 mm on offset paper 75 g. Printed in 4X0 CMYK colors. Business card format 90 x 50 mm printed on 300 g offset paper, in 4 x 4 CMYK colors.
Tags: Brand, poster, logotype, illustration, visual identity, Laika Design
Production Technology: To reify the brand, the identity project consists of business cards, printed in 300 g weight, menu, bag, surface design, architecture interaction and posters. The latter, printed on 75 g offset paper to be glued to walls and sidings inside of the Umano bar.
Design Challenge: Sao Paulo is a city that rebuilds itself every day, houses are demolished and buildings are built quickly, generating trendy neighborhoods at every moment and many regions end up losing their cultural relevance, causing tourists to focus only on these islands of services. The Umano bar needed to be an entertainment and service option authentically from Sao Paulo and that would generate a more intense nightlife in his neighborhood, making loyal the hotel public of the region.
Research: The Laika method is based on the synergy between linguistic and pictorial skills. Every project begins with the construction of its meaning, an affirmation, and the need to design small graphic narratives. Thus, the brand and its visual identity elements, made by Laika, allow the creation of diverse visual narratives, which contemplate the daily needs of communication and realization of the culture of the Umano brand.
Inspiration: The premise to develop a new brand for Ibis’s bar was cultural anthropophagy, a literary concept created by Oswald de Andrade, writer and poet from Sao Paulo. The principal aspect about cultural anthropophagy is the sense of humor: only concerns me what is not mine, say the poet. And an unusual behaviour, which is defined by devour without prejudice any culture that is foreign to it. That concept was the inspiration to create the Umano spirit and the brand’s lifestyle.
Project Duration: The project started in January 2020 and finished in July 2020 in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Operation Flow: In the Umano bar, the symbiosis between design and architecture allows to fill every spot of the bar with visual narratives, which invite the client to experience reinterpretations of the city's sights: the geometric designs of the sidewalks or representations of iconic buildings, namely Copan. Many icons are reinterpreted by the language project, such as excerpts of songs and clippings of poems by authors from the city. The client finds a city which deconstructs its seriousness and coldness.
Patents: Laika Design
Team Members: Ruis Vargas, Creative Director, Agnes Svilenov, Designer
Image Credits: Laika Design