The new family centre is called allesamt. This pleasant-sounding term is a reference to the communal aspect by the place. To create short, easily remembered names for the spaces, the names of areas in the town were used in a counting rhyme that children are very familiar with: Be La Gu – Ro Ha Ru – Mo Ma Hei – und du bisch frei!. Made from just two or three letters, these names now also stand for the different activities and the rooms in the building that are used for them. To impress them on the memory and to appeal to the natural delight in playing, these pictograms, flexible elements that can be rearranged, are mounted at a height where they can be easily reached. A start is made with the central food service area, where magnetic discs of different colours e wait on a plate to be rearranged, for instance to make a flower or an emoji, in the case of the areas for children’s naps, there are eyes that can be opened and closed, while for the sports room a football that can be rotated, in the oasis the letters surf on waves …

This not for profit association pursues the goal of developing a sensitivity for the built environment among children and young people and aims to secure a place for the culture of building in the Swiss educational curriculum. It was founded in 2008 under the name “Spacespot”. Due to its strange phonetic presence, the name Spacespot, like many trendy pseudo-Anglicisms, turned out to be short-lived. Atelier Andrea Gassner was commissioned to create a sustainable and contemporary brand. It was decided that the name for the German and French-language space should indicate what the association does and what can be found on the platform. The name was arrived at in a workshop that was held together with the heads of the association. When the idea for the name was first mentioned the group was immediately delighted with it. It arose in the context of an associative phonetic chain that started with “Archigen” and through the ending “jeunes” suddenly provided the key to a precise meaning: architecture and the art of building for young people

In designing the logotype Atelier Andrea Gassner made a simple yet highly effective intervention in the compactly set name that uses a powerful Antiqua typeface. Omitting the dots above the “i” and the “j” in the new name at the point of contact between two language cultures makes a subtle visual point. Often it is very simple distortions of familiar word images that guarantee brands that are concise and highly memorable.

“überholz” is the name of a new course in timber building at the University of Art and Design in Linz Names such as “the art of timber building” or “timber construction”, or poetic terms such as “Dickicht” (thicket) or “Stirnholz” (end grain wood) were some more obvious choices. The reduction to simple familiar words is surprising; the problems with the umlaut become the characteristic. The word “über” (about, through) suggests the transfer of knowledge and “holz” (wood) is simply called by its name. Aspects of architecture and planning are communicated by the typographical implementation. Here we are familiar with the word “Holz”, but what does it say to an Italian public? The Italian partners assured us that the target group in Italy is also familiar with the term “Holz”. It is hard to pronounce – a tongue-twister and a foreign word – but precisely on this account is suitable for the “corsi” (timber building seminars) of the Italian proHolz subsidiary organisation, “promo legno”.

A monochrome logotype: the word “Lehm” is set in the Grotesque font, Trade Gothic bold condensed, whereas the “o” is in an Antiqua (font type: New York). The Antiqua makes the “o” resonate and creates exciting contrasts between traditional and modern, filigree and stable. Reinhard Gassner

The former “Architekturforum Tirol” opened its new rooms in 2005 in the renovated brewhouse of the old Adambräu brewery in Innsbruck. This was linked with a call for a contemporary appearance. In a workshop together with Walter Bohatsch a name was arrived at. The new name for this association was “aut“ and was intended to hover freely, almost experimentally, in space without any associations such as institute, gallery or forum – on the contrary it was to be provocative and agitative and not an abbreviation with just three letters. In the initial phase the name was supported by a claim. The most interesting thing happens in-between, as it were, between the familiar term “out”, which of course starts not with an “a” but an “o”, and the simple way in which the sequence of letters can be explained by three words. Lettering + subline »architektur und tirol«.

The task was to design a name and appearance for a software company. The company’s dual track character is programmatic: on the one hand it offers high-tech content management systems and on the other creative, but standardised, software solutions. In a workshop with the client it was decided to use a freely invented onomatopoeic name. The solution consisted of two letters, actually just one form of letter that stands alternately on its feet or on its head – nu – n and u, not u and n, which would have had a far more negative connotation; the dynamics and the combined effect of the letters harbours numerous meanings, nu functions like a kind of acoustic pictogram, which is due to the familiar and yet at the same time unfamiliar quality of this name. It is too short to be abbreviated, it awakens curiosity and relates to the number two. This association is played with visually with by swivelling the letters in the logotype and in other applications – 2 colours with 2 x 2 letters that, when overlaid, produce new forms and colours.

The name zuschnitt stands for a magazine about wood as a material and works made of wood. It is aimed primarily at architects, people interested in building and those who make decisions about building in Austria and neighbouring countries. The title avoids words such as “wood”, “building” or “architecture”. Nevertheless it reports about wood, processing, series, the made-to-measure form. The language elements are the acceleration of the word at the beginning due to the “Z”, and the two terminating consonants at the end of the word. Consequently the middle part works as a resonance space for the two vowels, “u” and “i”.