Logo and Branding: ALA

ALA is an architectural firm based in Helsinki, Finland that aims to conceive and create structures with surprising engineering solutions utilised for residential housing, high-rise properties, centres of culture and underground stations. ALA commissioned international and design consultancy Kokoro & Moi to create their new identity and resolve the company’s solid cross disciplinary experience and creative approach.

“We challenge ourselves to provide options, develop prototypes and look for innovations. We believe in creating beauty with a design approach which combines the intuitive with the analytic and the practical with the extravagant.” 

- ALA Architects

ALA’s new identity has been designed with a very structural aesthetic that draws on the fundamental relationship between the triangle and load baring structures. This idea is distilled further by the removal of the cross bars on the A’s (a nod to reductionism and modernistic architectural principles) and sloped L that together appropriately represent the solid foundation from which the ALA team build from. The patterns featured throughout the stationary and website juxtapose the geometric diagonal lines established by the logo-type and organic clipping paths that characterise the practical and the more extravagant aspects of their work. The colour palette mixes both the classic black and standard architectural blue contrasted against white space, a good representation of both internal and external structural disciplines, while the use of primary colours adheres to the purist principles of modernism.

Visit the BP&O Logo Gallery for a chronological guide to all the identities reviewed on BP&O.

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Richard Baird Richard is a British freelance designer and writer who specialises in the development of logos, branding and packaging. He has written for Brand New and Design Week, is an editor for The Dieline, has featured in Computer Arts magazine and also runs the resource Design Survival. Follow:     |     Twitter     |     Facebook     |     Portfolio     |     Contact