The Adobe Hidden Treasures design contest was created by Adobe in order to restore, and bring attention to, lost designs from the Bauhaus school. This is the winning logo design concept we created for the contest, based on a natural supplement company called Cura.

The prompt for the contest was to create a Bauhaus-inspired logo design utilizing one of the fonts Adobe and Erik Spiekermann revived from the school’s archives. We chose to use ‘Joschmi’ for our main logotype, a beautiful font based on several letterforms designed by Bauhaus master Joost Schmidt.

The Bauhaus movement emphasized logic, simplicity, and function over needless decoration, so we wanted to heavily utilize that train of thought when creating this logo. Like many works from the Bauhaus designers, we wanted the logo to be bold, geometric, and eye catching.

For our submission, we wanted to distill the principles that the Bauhaus established by creating a logo design that was minimal, legible, and functional. To accomplish a minimal design, we let the ‘Joschmi’ font do the heavy lifting, making some modifications to perfect the kerning and rounding some of the squared edges in order to give the logotype a more natural, leaf-like appearance. We then paired it with some secondary type, set in one of our favorite typefaces, Futura Bold (a period appropriate choice). We chose Futura due to it’s simplicity, knowing it would allow the main logotype to shine.

In order to make our Hidden Treasures logo design easily legible, we forewent any needless frills and elected to use a single leaf as the only decoration, pulling the leaf-like shape directly from the letterforms in the logotype. We felt this was the simplest solution for our goal of portraying a feeling of ‘natural health’ without going over the top.