Porto Academy 2017
Architecture Summer School at FAUP
Identity / Editorial Design Workshop
We were invited by Amélia Brandão and Rodrigo Costa Lima to design the identity of, and coordinate an editorial design workshop at, the 2017 edition of Porto Academy – an anual architecture summer school at FAUP that unites architecture studios, professionals and students from all around the world to develop studio work together for a week period.
The identity design project was quite straightforward: there already existed a logo for Porto Academy and a preference for the green color. Building from there, we've set a new typographic structure and tone for the information, and used geometric shapes to create divisions or markers in space, differentiating each studio by associating a different geometric shape to it. Here are some examples of the produced materials.
For the editorial design workshop we had the task of designing and producing a booklet for each studio (12 in total) displaying the processes and outputs of their week at Porto Academy.
From the moment we've started working together with the studio leaders and their assistants we've realised we would be dealing with very different exercises that would naturally also lead to distinct outcomes – from detailed architecture projects to speculative illustrations or collages, from urban planning to models.
We went on to develop a set of editorial strategies to be able to communicate the diversity of contents and materials being produced, testing various possibilities to display content of different nature. These processes finally lead us to the design of a visual system – a simple navigation and layout structure – a frame that made room for content to occupy it in different ways according to the nature of the project itself, accommodating distinct approaches and complexity levels without struggling to maintain its coherence. We've also projected ways to anticipate the incorporation of typographic and image structures – briefs, introductions, indexes, texts, captions; photographs, drawings, collages, plans.
This was only possible to achieve in such short time thanks to all the editorial design workshop participants who've put a lot of energy and talent into studying, testing and developing a huge array of solutions, from which we were able to predict the outcomes from each of the architecture studios, and ultimately design the twelve booklets, from which we've selected a few spreads.