We’ve long-been fans of whatever they’re cooking up over at the Montreal-based agency Six Cinquième. Founders and partners in life Ash Phillips and Miro Laflaga are mission and purpose-driven in the way they’ve built and run the agency, highly intentional in the projects they take on. In their latest collaboration, Phillips, Laflaga and their team partnered with the Cincinnati non-profit formerly known as Artworks to revamp their brand from the ground up, starting with their name.
Artworks has been a pillar in the Greater Cincinnati area for over 30 years, creating community-based public art and providing vital career opportunities for artists of all ages. But over time, the organization had lost its footing in terms of a clearly communicated and understood identity. Locally, they’d been pigeon-holed as a regional mural producer, despite their multitude of other offerings. Meanwhile their name “Artworks” proved to confuse the public, given that moniker’s ubiquity across other organizations in Ohio and beyond. With these issues writ large, they turned to Six Cinquième for a complete strategic evolution. The brief was to distinguish the organization as a public art leader, protect their regional equity, and build a unique and clear national identity.
Cue: 1001 Colors
Through an intensive collaborative process employing their In Perspectives framework, the Six Cinquième team went straight to the source, traveling to Ohio to better learn about the organization through empirical, boots-on-the-ground experience and human-to-human interactions. “We approached this transformation through deep immersion and intense collaboration,” they explain on their website. This included a thorough stakeholder alignment process through workshops with 1001 Colors’ internal leadership team, board, community members, and partners, and speaking directly with local neighborhood businesses. They also visited the organization’s pre-construction site to ensure their approach aligned with their physical expansion.
The new name “was hidden in plain sight” Six Cinquième says, sourced from the renovation of 1001 Colors’ original 1909 structure in which they salvaged a hand-painted sign that read “1000 & 1 colors.” After a thorough exploratory renaming process “1001 Colors” was chosen to represent the expansive and limitless possibilities for community and personal development it fosters.
The 1001 Colors brand positioning was established to reflect the organization’s approachable yet distinguished stature. The playfulness of the organic squiggle icon and motif at the core of the brand system tempered by the muted font Owners Bold and serene color palette are central to achieving this balance.
The thick scribble icon anchors the rest of the brand universe. Hand-drawn, it subtly alludes to the sketched number “1001,” while capturing the sense of the human hand that’s inherent to the creative process.
“By leaning into the literal fabric of their new headquarters, the brand honors 30 years of grassroots equity while establishing a sophisticated, scalable framework for national expansion,” says Six Cinquième. 1001 Colors now has a brand presence worthy of their important work, that will help garner local and national recognition and respect, while still retaining the essence of the organization that matters the most: empowering young creatives to each their full potential in the arts.
