The making of Past & Found Studio
London-based contemporary art and design studio crafting works with found photographs
Past & Found Studio is London-based contemporary art & design practice created to commercialise unique artworks and prints crafted with found photographs. We looked at naming, brand elements and a visual identity that could flow into an online shop and various online channels.
Name and visual identity for Past & Found Studio
Past & Found Studio creates contemporary art pieces that are pared down, thus celebrating the found photographs at their heart.
With this in mind, we went through dozens of possible names, referring the passing of time, art vocables and extensive research into the pieces themselves. The chief criteria was to make sure it would fit with the range of the studio's creations, from the minimalist Peak to the humourous This way.
Past & Found ended up being just the right balance of straightforwardness and intrigue, while encapsulating the process of the artists behind the studio, which consists in collecting vintage photographs from all over the world into an archive, from which artworks emerge.
Similarly, the logotype is a bold typographic approach, in turn resolutely modern and harking back to the 70s and 80s, the golden age of analog photography.
Using FreshFonts' gorgeous Gangster Grotesk as a base layer, we opted for a visual identity leaving a lot of space to imagery, to make sure the artworks would be the main focus.
The main accent colour is a muted green which provides just the right amount of dynamism, while a bolder Klein-like blue can be used in places where art pieces aren't displayed.
Simplicity in layout and execution was the name of the game here, leading to the final product being very close to the wireframes.
Photography was of course a big focus, and we mixed in-situ photoshoots and mock-ups to place the pieces in an array of realistic settings.
