The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design

River House is a design-led residential building company in Suffolk, in the east of England, set up to build contemporary homes for design-conscious people in the region. It pairs the construction craft of James Brindley with the design and commercial focus of Guy Johnson, with London-based Studio Lisca coming on board to shape its identity and apply it across print, digital and signage ahead of the launch.

“We wanted the brand to communicate a sensitivity and commitment to design intent and architectural detail before the viewer had read the first word on the website,” explains Johnson, whose ambition was to stand out in a crowded Suffolk construction market where prospective clients struggle to tell one firm from another. Studio Lisca set itself a matching brief: to translate River House’s Suffolk roots, its brickwork, undulating countryside and the rivers that run through it, into a visual language the company could own, distinct from the heritage look the sector typically goes for.

Drawing on River House’s connection to Suffolk, the studio built the identity’s central device from a union of two local elements: the region’s brickwork and the movement of its rivers. “The concept of combining bricks and the movement of water to form the pattern just came up quite organically,” Co-founder & Creative Director Andrea Sanguineti tells us, the studio having “immediately thought of researching the area to use the landscape and architecture as the main inspiration.” That research also influenced the name of the company. “That is also how River House came about, discovering the different streams of the area,” she adds. “I think we came up with at least 30 different ways to represent a brick,” Sanguineti recalls, the studio drawn throughout to how “the rigid shapes contrasted the idea of the river in a very interesting way.” Co-founder & Creative Director Laura Spanu describes how the pattern evolved: “It started as more fluid, with more curves, but we developed it to feel more sturdy, yet elegant.”

In use, the device is built to flex, shifting with each application. “Sometimes it’s on the edges, acting almost like a piece of detailing, giving a format a distinctive finish without dominating it,” Co-founder & Creative Director Anisha Sachar explains. “Sometimes it’s a frame for imagery and content. In more expressive applications, such as the editorial publication, a dense field of pattern creates a richer, more intense feeling.” That range is clearest in River House’s printed publication, where the pattern becomes expressive in its own right rather than a supporting detail. “The structured typography and rectangular die-cut on the cover echo the clarity of the building’s exterior form and detailing,” she continues, “while the turn of the page reveals an almost textile-like field of pattern that speaks to the tactility, individuality and near-eccentricity of the interiors.” The move from cover to spread, she adds, “creates a sense of crossing a threshold and being invited into a home.”

Studio Lisca set the identity’s headings in Dinamo’s ABC Arizona Flare. It felt right because it has the presence and elegant character of a display serif, but also a contemporary quality that distinguishes it from heritage or tradition,” Sachar notes. “Its sculptural details introduce a sense of artistry that is true to the brand.” Longer text and functional copy fall to Hanken Grotesk; its role, she adds, is “much quieter, providing clarity and contrast while allowing Arizona to carry the more expressive parts.” Rather than fix the name into a lock-up, the studio anchors ‘River’ and ‘House’ at opposing edges of each composition, so the two words bracket the imagery and content between them, with a small ‘building company’ descriptor introducing a contrast in scale. “The words act almost like typographic walls, creating room for imagery,” Sachar explains, arranging elements “almost like they are a part of a plan or elevation.” A contained mark would have been easier to repeat, “but it would also have made the identity feel more static,” she continues, the flexible layouts themselves becoming recognisable as part of the brand.

The palette is grounded in place in the same way as the brickwork. Early on, the studio was set on Suffolk pink, a vernacular hue long associated with the region. But leaning on the county’s signature heritage colour, one that dates back to the 14th century, would have tied River House to Suffolk’s past when the aim was to show a building company forging its own path. “We were enamoured with it for so long that it took us a while to abandon it completely,” Sanguineti admits, “but as we started designing, we realised it didn’t have the right personality for the brand, moving it further away from a building company and more towards a hospitality identity.” Spanu, who had wanted the pink to be “the protagonist of the identity,” puts the turn down to the work itself: “We needed a palette with bolder contrast, one that could sustain the geometric patterns, and nature had the answer.” In its place came a pale blue drawn from the landscape and an earthy red taken from brick and clay, the two colours mirroring the sources the pattern is built from. “In the end the light blue and brick red just sat so nicely against each other, and against the photography of the houses and surrounding nature, that we had to admit that pink wasn’t quite the right fit for this project,” Sanguineti explains.

Because the identity had to live across print, screen and the built environment from the outset, Studio Lisca built the pattern to scale up or down easily. “The pattern, based on one singular shape, the rectangular brick, can be resized and stretched without losing its identity,” Spanu explains. On a live building site, restraint was the answer: “we decided to keep the pattern more subtle so that it wouldn’t distract too much from the building work.” In print, it’s the opposite. “We went heavier with the pattern, extending its use to the shape of the items themselves,” she continues, casting that adaptability as “a metaphor of River House’s promise to be adaptable while maintaining its identity and strengths.” Moving into the built environment reshaped earlier decisions, too. “In a bigger, more rigid application it might have been just a printed decoration,” Sanguineti notes, “digitally or in smaller, flexible prints that same pattern became the device with which we created layers and interesting shapes to hide or reveal parts of the brand as it is being discovered.”