THE VAULT
BRAND IDENTITY DESIGN // AGENCY WORK // MUHLENHAUPT + COMPANY // 2019
the challenge
Vaughan Buckley Construction recently purchased the historic Roxborough Trust Building located in Roxborough, PA. The vision for this historic landmark is to become the leading co-working space for the AEC Industry (architects, engineering and construction) in the Tri-State area. In addition to the co-working space, The Vault has multiple entities; “Combination Coffee” the curbside coffeeshop, “The Exchange” rooftop beer garden, and “Arcanum” the underground basement speakeasy. All of these brands need to fit under a similar identity system.
The approach
The Roxborough Trust building was well preserved by the VBC team, keeping some of the marble walls and even leaving the original vault door chambers. When on a preliminary tour throughout the facility, one of the Mosler safe combination locks caught our eye. It was with this piece of historic information that the brand identity began to develop. The graphic identity was also heavily influenced by the Art Deco time period as the building was established in 1924.
The Results
A consistent brand identity system that incorporates the history of the building and the lineage of Pennsylvania within The Vault and the subsidiary brands. There were some minor delays in the development and construction of the building pushing the final opening of the co-working space to late 2020.
The mood board draws inspiration from the Art Deco time period (around the same time as when the Roxborough trust building was also established). The bottom left image was sourced from one of the old safes located in the building and had a large influence in the final outcome of the logo that was delivered to the client. On the far left are some choices for color and building material throughout the co-working space.
When creating the identities for the other entities of The Vault, I wanted to create a consistent branding system with subtle changes to each of the marks that represent their specific offerings. For “Arcanum”, the red doorway took inspiration from the Cave of Kelpius, located in Fairmount, Pennsylvania to represent the underground speakeasy found in the basement. “Combination coffee” utilizes a brown coffee cup with the “C” in Coffee creating the handle for the mug. “The Exchange” takes inspiration from the dollar bill to represent the rooftop beer garden.
Taking inspiration from combination locking mechanisms, we created a single page site that upon scrolling, the dial would turn and the information within the frame would swap out. The photos used throughout the site were renderings, which actually fit very well within the art deco inspired identity we’d put together.
The web design was a stationery screen that with every scroll, the wheel would turn and the content would cycle through similar to that of a lock.
In addition to the brand identity system, we’d also put together multiple facebook ad campaigns targeted at the AEC industry with the intent of gathering leads to fill the space.
