Casamira turns light into graphic material in a layered art identity

The Brand Identity: Fuensanta Sobejano’s identity works across two layers. In some contexts, it frames her artwork with a quiet calm, letting negative space prevail so the work takes centre stage. In others, it extends past the frame, turning light itself into the graphic material. Installations by the Madrid-based digital artist explore perception through light, colour and movement, often asking the viewer to slow down and watch an image shift.

Casamira, the Barcelona-based creative studio behind the identity, aimed to mirror that practice, moving between restraint and expression depending on what each application needs. “The goal was to create a language that could move between neutrality and expression,” explains Designer & Creative Director Meritxell Casamira, “mirroring the analytical and sensory nature of her practice.” The two modes reflect both sides of Sobejano’s work: pieces that need space and quiet, and a practice built on the physical experience of light. The identity serves both at once. Where each mode applies is deliberate.

The framing mode is used for publications, informational materials and exhibition communications, anywhere that clarity and legibility have to come first. Negative space prevails, and the artwork leads. The expanded mode is reserved for moments where the identity can add something to the experience. “In these applications, gradients and chromatic transitions become active elements that evoke the perceptual phenomena explored in Fuensanta’s work,” Casamira tells us. In digital environments, those transitions move, behaving like the experience of light itself. The colour palette came out of the work itself.

Casamira studied Sobejano’s pieces and pulled out the colours that recurred across them, finding warm tones that carry a sense of intensity and a direct line back to light. Into that warmth, she introduced lilac, a counterpoint that aims to pull against the rest of the palette.

“It creates a more subtle tension,” Casamira explains, “and adds an unexpected chromatic dimension, generating a balance between warmth and contrast while avoiding an overly literal or predictable interpretation of light.” More than the individual colours, it is the way they meet that matters, with the transitions designed so that tones merge into one another and build depth. Translating the concept into a flat, printable system was a technical challenge, since light is spatial and constantly moving. In print, Casamira paid close attention to colour reproduction so the shifts between tones are smooth.

On screen, the same gradients animate, evolving slowly so they feel like light moving through a room rather than another graphic effect. “Rather than using dramatic glow effects, highly saturated gradients or overtly technological aesthetics, we focused on creating a quieter and more contemplative visual language,” Casamira notes. Holding all of this steady is a logotype designed to stay quiet, clear and timeless – a fixed point that lets the colour and light do the talking. The typography, Bureau Sans and Bureau Serif by Smuss Type Kiosk, works to the same brief.

Article truncated for readability. Read the full piece →

The article presents a unique approach to brand identity through the lens of light and perception, which is significant for the design industry and offers actionable insights for brand strategy professionals.