Allie Heesh and Sara Silva Santos brush, paint and scan for upa!

The Brand Identity: In Portuguese, upa! is the kind of word you’d use to encourage a child to get up, to urge someone to keep going or to cheer a friend through a difficult moment. It’s enthusiastic, supportive and colloquial. It doesn’t translate neatly but carries an immediate emotional weight. For a new bouldering centre in the university city of Coimbra, independent designers Sara Silva Santos and Allie Heesh built an entire identity around this single word. The founders of upa! arrived with clear intentions shaped by their time working in Berlin’s bouldering clubs.

They knew the environment they wanted to foster: friendly, slightly challenging and deeply connected to its local community. “Their brief made it clear that the identity should feel rooted in the local context, reflecting Coimbra’s personality and culture,” Sara explains.

That emphasis on place naturally led the design team toward finding a name in the local vernacular. Working with copywriter Andreia Luísa on the naming, the team identified several qualities the identity needed to embody: challenging rigidity, creating breathing room for Coimbra’s student population, hinting at the physical act of climbing, and evoking an emotional response. "Andreia landed on a brilliant solution: a word that encourages you to go further, ‘Up, up, you go,’” Sara shares.

The tagline Escalódromo de Coimbra accompanies the name, a playful nod to one of the city’s academic traditions that immediately signals what the space is about whilst serving as a subtle homage to local heritage. Through their research, the team learned that climbing remains relatively new to Coimbra.

As a result, the identity needed to feel open and inviting rather than specialist or intimidating – appealing equally to experienced climbers, curious families and first-timers looking to try something different. The hand-brushed logo sits at the centre of the visual language, its rough textures and uneven edges capturing the upward motion of a climb. Allie describes the process of arriving at the final mark as one of deliberate experimentation. “We tested a bunch of different pens, brushes and inks to get the texture right,” she recalls.

“Starting on blank paper was pretty intimidating, so we just focused on writing the name over and over, trying different tools.” The only constant was maintaining a natural feel with a slight upward, italic energy to the lettering. Most of the creative work happened in this hand-done stage, where the focus was on finding the right rhythm, pressure and character rather than perfecting anything. Once a version emerged that the team felt good about, scanning introduced an unexpected quality. “The scan itself introduced these sharper angles and breaks in the strokes, which started to reference rock surfaces in a really natural way,” Allie notes.

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The article discusses a unique branding strategy that emphasizes community and inclusivity in a niche market, making it significant and relevant for brand strategy professionals.