Gallery: How House Industries Designs Its Retrotastic Logos and Typefaces
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*House Industries: The Process Is the Inspiration* recounts the Delaware design studio's 25 years in business in a series of vignettes. Each shows how a project came together. This wooden lettered horse for an Hermès store in Japan, took a few collaborations to take off. First, with a designer who could digitally render a mock-up of the final window display—to give the client an idea of what a wooden horse made out of letters would look like—and second, with Michigan woodworkers who could mill the final product.
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In 2000, House Industries decided to create a font based on the legacy of designers Charles and Ray Eames. After ample research, the studio created a typeface based on Ray's handwriting. When they presented it to Eames Demetrios, the famed designers’ grandson, it flopped. “He showed us how to go back and try to build something that wasn’t a regurgitation of something we’d seen before, but a tool that could point to something we love about Eames,” says co-founder Andy Cruz. The result was a typeface that channels Eames-ian principles like elegance, sturdiness, and economy of space.
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Custom Papers Group was an early client of House Industries. CPG needed new swatch books and a marketing campaign for its papers, which it sold to graphic designers. House Industries was free to promote the paper however it chose—so it built a scheme around hot-rodding, one of Cruz's hobbies. With it, they developed a groovy, bell-bottomed font. Designers like the font, and asked where to buy it. Street Van fonts was born, and House Industries became a type foundry.
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The House Industries team are longtime fans of Richard Neutra, who designed much of the midcentury modern architecture of Southern California. Years back, they resurrected letters found on Neutra's houses, turning it into a full-fledged font. It became a hit: you probably know Neutra as the Shake Shack font. Later, the city of Washington DC adopted it as its municipal typeface.
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Jimmy Kimmel, it turns out, is once aspired to be a graphic designer. That passion made him an especially collaborative client for House Industries. During the design process, Kimmel would watch old movies, and photograph his screen when hotel and restaurant signs appeared. He sent those to the House Industries team, who eventually created a signage mash-up for Kimmel, who was raised in both Brooklyn and Las Vegas: part Vegas lights, part Brooklyn delicatessen.
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Understanding how to make vintage designs feel fresh has made House Industries popular with clients ranging from the Jimmy Kimmel Show to director JJ Abrams, a House Industries fanboy and author of the book’s introduction. To get that balance right, the House Industries designers study a lot of archives. These come from Photo-Lettering Inc., a type foundry that opened in 1936.
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Photo-Lettering use photography to manipulate letters in ways that weren’t possible with metal or wood type, giving its clients a huge advantage. Through friendships and some luck, the House Industries team acquired many of Photo-Lettering's original collections. They created digital versions of some of the alphabets, and used others for a type-over-photo app, so the legacy would live on.
