About our logo
The New-works logotype was designed by Richard Ardagh Studio. Richard is a fantastic collaborator and we have enjoyed a working relationship that has goes back decades. His work designing our logo encapsulates the strength we see in specialisation and collaboration.
A consistent optical appearance of the logo is achieved by decreasing the number of columns in the font as the scale reduces — as per the top row. The bottom row illustrates this by showing what happens when the variants on the top row are scaled to the same size.
Richard designed our original TDO branding, and the Great Suffolk Yard wayfinding. His clients include National Portrait Gallery and the London Design Guide among many others, and his work always has a confident beauty. We appreciate Richard’s particular strength in communicating complicated messages and values through logo and letterform design.
We met Richard to talk through our plan to launch New-works and the direction in which we passionately feel the profession needs to move. Then we left him alone and trusted him.
When we met to review the different directions he felt we could take the logo we were honest, open and excited in equal measure. The ideas were brilliant, but it was in the workshop session where the collaboration really worked and the outcome was refined. Interestingly Richard noted he is often asked to leave the room so clients can discuss and reach conclusions in private before they feedback, perhaps so they can be honest with one another without either offending or self-censoring. Our view was that it was important to have those conversations openly and together, partly so Richard could feedback in real-time, but also so that he could see where our feedback had come from to better inform its direction of travel.
Specialism and collaboration are founding principles of New-works. The process with Richard is exactly how we see those principles working: specialists who are the best at what they do, coming together to achieve a better shared outcome than any one of them doing everything.
The final logo was entirely by Richard’s hand and is true to our collaboration. We are particularly excited that he has designed an entirely new font for the logo that reflects our move away from TDO’s business model, which used a more recognisable, existing serif font, and into the exciting new future we see for architects.
In his words:
'The New-works logotype embodies the company’s fresh approach. Modelled on an intentionally simplified grid, the letterforms are constructed from a modular system of tapered vertical strokes. It has a subtle dynamism, combining natural curves with systematic structure and is anchored by the hyphen from the web URL which is maintained as a distinctive element.'
Tom Lewith, New-works Founding Director