Non-Verbal Club explores connections and ideas for new URSA identity

When Luís Ribeiro da Silva and Alexandre Delmar were founding a new art and architecture studio, Ursa, they turned to agency Non-Verbal Club (formerly Atelier Martino&Jaña) to produce a website and identity. “It all started with a straightforward request from Luís and Alexandre to design the identity for an upcoming art and architecture studio,” say the designers. “What we find uncommon – and therefore very interesting – in Ursa is its commitment to explore the mixture of both photography and architecture in each project from the very beginning.”

Non-Verbal Club (NVC) decided that Ursa needed more than a visual form for its identity and portfolio but it needed a system that could help display how the studio’s rationale translates into different projects. “When Luís and Alexandre ​presented us a list of possible names for the studio, we immediately felt attracted to Ursa (also the name of their cat), because it reminded us of the Ursa constellations,” say NVC. “The idea that mankind has a natural tendency to draw shapes in the sky by connecting and grouping bright dots, and use them as navigational tools for their ground activities, appeared to us as the perfect visual metaphor to express those principles. In the end, we could say it went from a cat, to the stars, to the identity.”

Used across print and digital materials, the connections between everything from individual characters in the company name to more conceptual links between projects are exposed. “It’ll take time to know where both Ursa and ourselves want this identity to go, and to understand which will be the new necessities for its communication,” say the designers. “At this first stage, it was very important for the identity, especially the website, to act as a statement of its priorities – exposing rationale and connected pieces of ideas and ongoing work, rather than having very pretty projects on a portfolio-like display.”