Layering Illumination and Scaffolding
A Branding Case Study for Light + Ladder
Light + Ladder’s work is passionate. It’s down-to-earth. The designs both calming and infinitely mysterious — a dark lake on a clear day. In creating a brand as open and elevated as the pieces, we crafted to make sure every detail carried through.
At first glance, L+L founder Farrah Sit’s objects carry a simplicity that appears almost basic. On closer inspection, the well-designed items for the home break in different directions, stop at uneven points, and contain multitudes and contradictions within a well-balanced whole. The VAYU slices alongside an inner casing like a classroom planetary model; brutalist inspirations showcase themselves in the asymmetrical ARCHROMO; the minimal HIBALL tumbler cleverly disguises a hand ledge while nodding at Mo’ai sculptures and the tiki mug tradition — these objects reveal their secrets to those that know how to look.
Starting in 2014, L+L worked with Samarskaya & Partners to create a contemporary re-brand to fit the work. Expanding to a team that included designers, developers, copywriters, and printers, we built a visual style that was as meticulously calculated as the geometry on any one of L+L’s objects, and with three years of manifesting itself in the retail space, all the angles still prove to be just right.
The Logo
Initially, the scope of the project was fairly constrained: create a logo or wordmark to communicate the firm’s ethos. The company name, Light + Ladder, comes from a quote by the Persian poet Rumi that encapsulates Sit’s vision of constant ascension: “Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder.”
Reflecting both the objects and the vision, the resulting logo is simple and geometric while containing a subtle complexity underneath. Splitting the text in two allowed a balanced unit that would lift upwards while reading in either direction, perfect when placed on tags that spin and are often spotted from different angles. The weightlessness Sit envisioned carries through via the emblem’s ultra-thin lines, which hold the empty space around the words.
To work around the technical demands of a logo that’s employed in many different manifestations — stamped on leather, branded on wood, etched into ceramic, or used in large scale projections — the logo was finalized as nine different grades of slightly varying thicknesses and spacial balance.
The Printed + The Digital Space
With the logo established and succeeding in its first printed manifestations, it was time to extrapolate its tenor to the rest of L+L’s visual communications. As we moved on to designing for print, packaging, web, social, and exhibition spaces, it was imperative that the sharp, attuned thinking and logic that went into creating the logo carried through in every design that Samarskaya & Partners was involved in.
White light and open space were key to the art direction of the photography, and were even more integral in the layout; all of the various shades of off-white, and distilled light, laying side by side. The photographs were placed on a plain canvas — contrasting the off-white of the backgrounds with the pure-white of the empty page — and given generous margins in the spaces between them. Sit’s off-kilter geometry was mirrored through the placement of the text and images. On the web, they are asymmetrical and suspended in air within each of the dozen templates. In print and on packaging, the photos bleed around corners and page edges. On social, the grid of Instagram frames butt up against each other in seemingly random configurations.
The versatility and wryness of the objects needed to be pulled in, the elements you don’t realize are there until you’re already using them. One print brochure, thanks to a single slit and four page scores, serves double duty as both a poster and, when folded, a booklet — two layouts carefully balanced so that neither felt like secondary function. On the web, the homepage uses an oversized canvas bigger than the view-port, allowing for peeks and explorations beyond the edges before entering directly in. Designing for maximum open space (on the website) allowed us to incorporate L+L’s style in other ways, too: the menu suspends itself like magnets, sprawling out in even equilibrium at the four poles. The lightness of the logo is counter-balanced with the blocky, geometric, barely rounded letters of the menu, which hang on the page like a pair of L+L’s PARALLAX hooks. The 404 page (always a true test of the meticulousness of any designer) shows a planter that’s seen better days.
Light + Ladder’s ethos is to innovate while retaining an understated cool, her pieces seemingly unobtrusive, breaking in new complexities the more one turns them over. The package of various designs we presented communicated their message best by acting in the same way, giving the company a welcoming aesthetic that lifted it up above the rest.
Samarskaya & Partners: Jonathan Yamakami, Nic Sanchez, James Todd, Josh Reisner, Eric Jacobsen, Squarespace CMS, Rachel Hisako White, Nicole Franzen, Brooke Holmes, Lisa Diederich, Linco, Mama’s Sauce, Ist Printing, B-P Products.
