Identitätssysteme · Zürich · since 2011
Identity is a system, not a logo.
We design the wordmark, the typeface plan, the grid and the rulebook that keep a brand coherent for decades. We do nothing else, for four clients a year, from a room on Langstrasse.
The wall
Our work is a set of rules, so the portfolio is a program. Every poster below is composed live, in code, from the studio's house grammar — grid, one family, one red. Drag them. Shuffle them. The system holds.
Double-tap any poster to recompose just that one.
The practice
Every engagement ends the same way: a manual. Five chapters, numbered here as they are numbered in the book we hand over.
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Kapitel 1
Wortmarke
The name, drawn once, correctly. We test it at 9 px on a train ticket and at 9 m on a facade before you ever see it.
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Kapitel 2
Schrift
One family, a fixed scale, and the discipline to refuse a thirteenth size. Licensing negotiated for every canton you operate in.
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Kapitel 3
Raster
The grid that makes a poster, an annual report and an app screen recognisably one organisation. Columns, baseline, margins — measured, not felt.
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Kapitel 4
Farbe
Usually fewer colours than you arrived with. We specify each one in CMYK, RAL, NCS and hex, with rules for when it may not appear.
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Kapitel 5
Regelwerk
The manual itself: every permitted composition, every forbidden one. Written so a printer in Lugano and an intern in Geneva produce the same brand.
The scale
One grotesk, twelve sizes, nothing in between. This is the complete typographic inventory of the page you are reading — if a size is not on this ladder, it does not exist here.
Selected systems
Sixty-one identity systems since 2011. Eight are shown; the rest are under NDA or simply doing their job quietly.
| Client | Sector | Delivered | In use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kantonalbank Uri | Retail banking | Wordmark · 4-weight plan · 212-page manual | 2024 — |
| Tonhalle West | Concert hall | Poster grammar · season templates · wayfinding type | 2023 — |
| Verlag Hirzel & Roth | Publishing | Imprint system · spine grid · 3 series liveries | 2022 — |
| Klinik Sonnhalde | Healthcare | Wordmark · signage alphabet · forms programme | 2021 — |
| Stadtwerke Winterthur | Utilities | Full system refit · vehicle livery · 148-page manual | 2019 — |
| Café Odeon Gruppe | Hospitality | Wordmark · menu grid · packaging rules | 2018 — |
| Museum für Gestaltung Basel | Culture | Exhibition identity kit · didactic type scale | 2016 — |
| Seilbahn Rigi AG | Transport | Wordmark · timetable typography · ticket system | 2013 — |
"In use" has no end date on purpose. A system that needs replacing in five years was not a system.
We take four
systems a year.
Two slots remain for 2027. If your organisation needs a logo by Friday, we are the wrong studio — and we can recommend three good ones. If it needs an identity that will outlast the people in this room, write to us.
neu@studiogrotesk.chStudio Grotesk GmbH
Langstrasse 94, 3. OG
8004 Zürich, Schweiz
+41 44 240 18 12
Mo–Do, 9–18 Uhr
Fr is for the archive
Founded 2011
7 designers, 1 typesetter,
1 Heidelberg proof press