Groth
Groth is an architectural and product design studio working across interiors, furniture, objects, and material research, with a particular interest in sustainable design and building health.
The identity needed to communicate the technical depth and research behind the practice, while remaining flexible enough to operate as a more accessible consumer brand. The result is a visual language that plays with these two sides of the studio's personality, combining confident, friendly forms with a more technical, almost academic approach to typography and graphics.
The Groth wordmark was designed to feel confident, approachable, and almost a little bulbous, with rounded letterforms that give it a distinctly friendly character. It needed to work as the identity of an architectural practice, but also have the personality and presence to stand on its own as a consumer brand.
There's a deliberate contrast between the softness of the wordmark and the more technical visual language surrounding it, allowing the identity to move between something quite playful and something considerably more serious.
The icon is a redrawing of an earlier Groth symbol, a ball inside a box. It's a simple composition of primitive shapes that plays with the relationship between objects and the spaces they occupy, a fairly direct reference to the nature of the practice.
The geometry was refined to sit comfortably within the new identity, creating a recognizable symbol that could operate independently of the wordmark.
The Groth mark was animated by Patrick Finn to feel as though it was being drawn, rather than simply appearing on screen.
Groth's website is divided into two independently scrolling sections, reflecting the slightly split personality of the practice.
On one side, architectural projects and finished spaces. On the other, a research and design practice exploring everything from mycelium-based building materials to skateparks made from recycled ocean plastic.
Rather than forcing everything into a conventional portfolio, the split layout gives each side its own space and visual character, with color helping distinguish between the two.
Groth's website needed to establish credibility beyond the usual expectations of an interior design practice. There's a serious research and technical component to the work, and the visual language needed to communicate that.
Clean, confident typography and generous layouts are augmented with diagrammatic wireframes and architectural drawings. Set against the photography of finished spaces, these more technical elements introduce another layer to the work, suggesting the thinking, research, and material exploration behind the final result.
The Research & Design section of Groth's website adopts a distinctly different visual vernacular, something closer to an academic paper than a conventional architecture portfolio.
Technical drawings, structured typography, and a peach-colored background give the section an almost printed quality, like a collection of research papers presented on colored stock. It's a little more dense and technical, deliberately reflecting the experimental and research-driven nature of the work itself.
For printed materials, Groth's identity leans into the more expressive side of the brand, with business cards produced on a rich, rusty-orange Colorplan stock.
The warmer palette and larger applications of the wordmark give these pieces a more approachable, almost consumer-brand quality. It's an opportunity to dial up the personality of the identity, creating something that feels confident and human while retaining the precision of the broader visual system.