How the setting shapes the way an architect's work comes across

A project comes across stronger when the practice behind it looks considered. People never judge work apart from the setting in which they see it, and for an architect that means the logo, the website, the photography and the way a project is presented. In our experience the practice where everything fits together earns trust sooner, even when another practice shows a design that is just as good.

What do we mean by the setting of your work?

The setting is everything someone sees and reads before and while they look at your work. In a museum that is the white wall, the light and the label next to the painting. For an architecture practice it is the name, the logo, the typography, the website and the tone of the writing.

Designer Virgil Abloh, who trained as an architect, once explained it with a candle. Place that candle in a white gallery and it looks like a work of art. Place the same candle in a garage and it looks like something someone would throw away. According to Abloh a designer can spend a lot of time explaining the candle, or he can simply design the room. For an architecture practice that room is everything around the work, from the logo to the website where a project is shown.

Why does the same project come across stronger from one practice?

We notice it in ourselves when we scroll through the work of architects. When a practice with a calm and considered identity shares a house, we assume every choice in that design was made on purpose. When a practice with a messy identity shares a similar house, we look at it more quickly and trust the details less. The design is equally good in both cases. We suspect that a client comparing three practices looks in the same way.

Is that only a feeling?

There is a well known example from outside architecture. On 12 January 2007 violinist Joshua Bell played incognito in a metro station in Washington, as an experiment by The Washington Post. Of the 1,097 people who walked past, seven stopped to listen, while the same musician fills concert halls elsewhere. He collected just over 32 dollars, leaving aside the 20 dollars from the one woman who recognised him.

A metro station is something else than an architecture practice and we draw no numbers from it. It does show how strongly the place decides whether people take the time to look.

When does the setting work?

The setting only works when all those parts hold together. A good logo on a website that feels messy, or strong photographs with writing that says nothing, leave the whole unfinished. Only when everything tells the same story does someone look at the work without being distracted by what surrounds it. How to approach that in practice and where to start, you can read in why strong work by architects often goes unnoticed online.

The same goes for interior architects, designers and makers, because their work is always shown in a setting too.

What does this mean for your practice?

The work itself does not need to change. At Atelier Jaja, the interior studio of Jani Jaspers in Mechelen, the designs were clear and functional and the identity and website had to become that too. The work stayed the same and we designed the setting around it. More examples, including architecture practices, are in our projects.

Anyone who makes good work benefits when the setting in which people get to see it is right as well.

Studio Kumo is a studio for branding and Webflow websites in the Mechelen region. We work for architects, interior architects, designers and makers in Flanders.