Collins unifies downtown San Francisco neighborhood under new identity, The East Cut

A locality of downtown San Francisco has launched a new visual identity (and destination on Google Maps), which has been conceptualised and created by local design agency Collins, in partnership with The East Cut Community Benefits District and the local community. The agency, which has worked with the likes of Airbnb, Aldo and Nike Jordan, has designed the branding and come up with the name for The East Cut, described by the team as a “modern metropolitan community” joining Transbay, Folsom and Rincon Hill districts.

Capturing the area’s cosmopolitan and bold environment and fusing this with nods to the area’s past, the neighbourhood has received a highly graphic treatment through video, photography, illustration and a visually engaging colour palette.

The logo, in architectural tones of yellow, green, orange, pink, blue and maroon, has been inspired by the map of The East Cut’s location in San Francisco, built together by the blocks and streets of the three neighbourhoods it now represents, to create a bold “E”. Both dynamic and distinctively simple, the logo and the colour scheme serve to both stand out and fit in — with the bright evocative hues chosen for their ability to “pop” in this urban space.

Both the website – in the same colourful tones – for The East Cut and the large-scale posters which line the new area feature a thin, bold, sans serif type, lending a graphically forward-thinking approach in line with the newness of the place it was born out of and created for by Collins.

The visual identity created serves to give this new neighbourhood a unifying voice, one which the creative agency describe as “unequivocally its own in San Francisco.” Adding, “The new name, symbol and identity program now signals both the place it occupies, as well as its reinvention.”