UY Studio

Founded in 2013, UY Studio is a Berlin based fashion label and art collective that designs and produces garments as well as experiences in the means of potentializing diverse embodiments of life. Under a wide rebranding process led by Matheus Dicl Lee and Gustavo Bonfiglioli, Sometimes Always was in charge of redesigning UY’s visual identity. Together with our partner Solenn Robic we reworked the whole visual universe of the brand, redefining all the core aspects of its ID such as logotype, color palette and typographic family. Moreover, these assets were further developed in an extensive range of assets both in print and in digital formats.

Their take on beauty is raw, built on simple yet powerful materials, straightforward shapes, and minimal interventions to stimulate a symbolic sensation of crude, and spontaneous wholeness of real-life being. The identity we designed tries to resonate exactly this raw aspect of the brand through very simple design choices, such as:

1. Just one typeface (Gerstner Programm) with just one weight (regular)
2. A straightforward lettermark with no interventions of any sort apart from a simple ligature between U and Y
3. A rough color palette made out of grays, nudes and a burgundy
4. A heavy use of black and white images
5. A super reductive version of UY that adjusts its height according to any need

With a focus on the multiplicity of the human body and an unconformity with beauty standards, the brand positions itself as a global home and community, welcoming artists from different countries, cultures and backgrounds. As UY defines itself, “a so-called hybrid place; where global meets local, cozy meets edgy, and familiarity meets cultural fluidity”.

The website was coded by the sweetest Marijn Degenaar, a fellow designer and coder that we admired for so long and finally had a chance to work with.

Category: Visual Identity 
Location: Berlin
Client: UY Studio
Collaborators: Solenn Robic, Marijn Degenaar, Matheus Dick Lee, Gustavo Bonfiglioli
Year: 2021