De School’s identity by Mainstudio and Jeremy Jansen is inspired by its modular architecture

Amsterdam-based Mainstudio, working with Jeremy Jansen, has created a new identity for the De School inspired by the architecture and history of the building. The De School is a social club, restaurant, gallery, gym and community centre housed in a repurposed school in west Amsterdam designed by Dutch architect J.B Ingwersen in 1973. The branding takes the organisational grid of the brutalist building and makes it visible across the promotional assets and wayfinding for the centre.“By revealing the underlying organisational grid of the identity, it forms an essential component of it; components can be removed, added, or rearranged in new formations, reflecting its former and current interior,” say the designers. “We made an abstract grid, derived from architectural gestures (mainly the square), then the typography and the images fit that grid. It is, in this way, very similar to the identity for the Illinois Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture in Chicago.”

The identity is anchored around the digital platform for the venue and then extends across printed brochures, posters and even a light installation in the building. The elegant and simple design has a clarity and rigour that can adapt to the future needs and functions of the venue. The careful selection of a simple font also serves this flexibility and is another nod to the past life of the building. “A monospaced font, which echoes that formerly found on typewriters, relates the identity to the time period during which its building, the school, was originally constructed,“ say the designers. “The font balances the former; together, along with the revealed grid, the identity imparts a dynamic within the modular orientation of the venue’s public face.”