THE REEF

The Reef Brand Identity

One building. Three identities.
One connected system.

For its 55th anniversary, LA Mart evolved into The Reef—a creative destination bringing together Maker City, Magic Box, and the legacy LA Mart under one roof.

Working as part of a four-designer team, I helped develop a new identity system that could unite all three destinations while preserving the recognition of the original LA Mart brand. The result was a flexible family of identities built around connection, individuality, and the creative ecosystem inside the building.

BRAND IDENTITY · VISUAL SYSTEMS · ART DIRECTION

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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The Reef identity was developed collaboratively by a four-person design team, bringing together different perspectives around a shared brand system.

Designers

Jenn Chow Tran
Tiff Chiu
Zachariah Kahn
Sam Rodriguez

Creative Director

Sharon Ann Lee

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