The Reef: A Creative Habitat

The Reef

Just in time for its 55th anniversary, LA Mart evolved into The Reef: a creative habitat that houses three different entities:

  • Maker City, a creative co-working space with production machinery

  • Magic Box: a large space for hosting conventions and events and

  • LA Mart: a collection of showrooms and design sale centers

In the spirit of this creative ecosystem, we formed a four-person team of freelance designers with complementary strengths to rebrand the building. Together we developed a systemic logo that encompasses “The Reef” and its divisions. The rebrand’s objective was to maintain LA Mart’s legacy while appealing to savvy new creators, event hosts, and businesses. 

Creative Director: Sharon Ann Lee
Designers: Jenn Chow Tran, Tiff Chiu, Zachariah Kahn, Sam Rodriguez

Scope
Branding
Print Design
Art Direction

Client
The Reef LA

Role
Designer

CREATIVE PROCESS

In true collaborative fashion, our team brainstormed individually, then came together to narrow our ideas down to 4 guiding concepts:

UNIFIED DIVERSITY
The Reef brought together 3 different entities with one goal

BIOMIMICRY AND LAYERS
The Reef takes inspiration from a natural living ecosystem

SHELL
The Reef was a building filled with so many possibilities

SIMPLICITY IN COMPLEXITY
Something that looks complicated from afar can have a simple underlying principle to it

LEGACY
This rebrand came at the 55th anniversary of LA Mart. The original logo had legacy, so it was important to maintain it.

LOGO SKETCHES
We developed systemic logos inspired by legacy logo and the four guiding concepts.

LOGO EXPLORATIONS
It was important to have the Reef logo relate to the logos of Maker City, Magic Box, and LA Mart. We explored concepts in black and white and color and at different scales to test how legible the logo would be.

FINAL IDENTITY

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Special shoutout to my teammates on this project:
Tiff Chiu • Zachariah Kahn • Sam Rodriguez
This was my first real-world design project after graduating from California College of the Arts. The experience we shared collaborating together was so fun and unforgettable!

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