My name is Sean. “Redbrick” is a sort of business pseudonym, I guess - I’m juggling a few projects right now and naming my business after myself would make things more complicated.

[If you’re thinking, “doesn’t the rest of the website say ‘we?’,” it does! The “corporate we” feels nicer than writing “I” all the time.]

Aside from a few jobs and internships around North America, I’ve lived in Cambridge, Ontario for most of my life. I even got my bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the architecture school downtown, and worked in that industry for a few years before starting redbrick.

It turns out the lessons learned in the slow project of architecture are useful elsewhere. A good building is not just the slick visuals you use to sell units, after all; it’s a long-term project of communication, execution, and upkeep. How do you explain it to people who don’t think like you do? How does it get built? How does it age? How difficult is maintenance going to be, and how do you fix that in advance?

In short: design should solve problems, not create more.

The brand.

The Redbrick Design & Branding visual identity is an example of building a brand out of what you have on hand.

I found “Red Brick Cafe” on a list of unused business names a friend had written. I chose it after a bit of modification: it suits my neighbourhood and previous career, it has a pleasant colour association built in, and I felt it could serve as a valuable tool for explaining how I like to work – building things up, piece by piece.

I had some sample wordmarks lying around, and one in particular worked for the name’s vibe, so I ran with it. I like building visual motifs piece by piece, so I started with a colour palette based around dark reds and started playing with the wordmark.

Eventually, I drew up some little bricks and paired them with an array of vibrant backgrounds. This has helped form a consistent visual language across the website and on social media with relatively minimal work, giving me a lot of freedom to play outside of the main branding.