The SubstationConnecting Culture and Community

Emphasizing accessibility hand-in-hand with experimentation

The Substation is a unique large-scale multi-purpose gallery, performance space and dance studio housed inside a former industrial building in Melbourne’s inner west. Presenting a curated program of contemporary and experimental work to a broad audience, while simultaneously operating as a vital community hub. The Substation inhabits a unique space within the Australian cultural landscape.

What began as a website redesign soon evolved into a complete re-imaging of their brand and communications. Beginning with the visual identity, we proposed a system that operates much like file directory tree syntax. The forward slash within the wordmark acts to intersect and aggregate ideas, and allowing for endless experimentation and play.

Supporting this system is an (anti-)logo designed to subvert the aforementioned structure, and to evolve over time. Launching with 15 iterations, these will be updated seasonally reflecting the artists and themes present within the programming in any given year. This curated aspect of the brand identity ensures it remains deeply and visibly connected to culture, and the context within which it operates.

Building upon the ideas in the brand system, we redesigned The Substation website as an evolving archive. The new website provides greater access to the unique diversity of current and past programming, and a deeper perspective on the organization itself. Notions of compression and release are central to the experience of the new site; whether it’s the syntax of the page titles, the way content is blended together via gradient, or obscured via static and noise, or the “double squeeze” effect of the menu. Accessibility hand-in-hand with experimentation.

Check it out here, and below.

The Substation is a unique large-scale multi-purpose gallery, performance space and dance studio housed inside a former industrial building in Melbourne’s inner west. Presenting a curated program of contemporary and experimental work to a broad audience, while simultaneously operating as a vital community hub. The Substation inhabits a unique space within the Australian cultural landscape.

What began as a website redesign soon evolved into a complete re-imaging of their brand and communications. Beginning with the visual identity, we proposed a system that operates much like file directory tree syntax. The forward slash within the wordmark acts to intersect and aggregate ideas, and allowing for endless experimentation and play.

Supporting this system is an (anti-)logo designed to subvert the aforementioned structure, and to evolve over time. Launching with 15 iterations, these will be updated seasonally reflecting the artists and themes present within the programming in any given year. This curated aspect of the brand identity ensures it remains deeply and visibly connected to culture, and the context within which it operates.

Building upon the ideas in the brand system, we redesigned The Substation website as an evolving archive. The new website provides greater access to the unique diversity of current and past programming, and a deeper perspective on the organization itself. Notions of compression and release are central to the experience of the new site; whether it’s the syntax of the page titles, the way content is blended together via gradient, or obscured via static and noise, or the “double squeeze” effect of the menu. Accessibility hand-in-hand with experimentation.

Check it out here, and below.