To develop a name and visual identity for a new neighborhood in downtown San Francisco. Consisting of three distinct districts, the new neighborhood creates a single metropolitan community. The neighborhood has a rich history, but has long been overlooked. With an emphasis on modern, urban living, the neighborhood features San Francisco’s tallest building, its first centralized rapid transit center, numerous green spaces and mixed residential buildings. With a vibrant community heavily involved at each step, this part of town has been imagined as the city’s first true live/work neighborhood. It’s transformation—and it’s accompanying identity—needed to represent a headlong charge into the future.

We sought to capture the area’s cosmopolitan, bold sensibility, while nodding to its vital past—history with a modern edge. The name, The East Cut, references the Second Street Cut, a late 19th-century urban development project that marked marked the last significant change seen in the neighborhood. The identity speaks to the many types and layers of life found in a distinctly urban neighborhood. The three layers form a stacked “E,” creating a highly graphic treatment that can either be used in bright, but sophisticated colors or as empty containers to feature the many faces and places found here.

The logo uses the three districts of the neighborhood to create a bold E, which we use to highlight and celebrate the area’s life and unique features, from the bridge to the bay, through video, photography, illustration and color.

The surrounding identity system was designed to be dynamic, but also distinctive in its simplicity. The palette was created to stand out and fit in, which we did by combining architectural tones with the bright evocative hues that stand out in an urban space.

Together this gives the neighborhood an unifying voice, one that is unequivocally its own in San Francisco. The new name, symbol and identity program now signals both the place it occupies, as well as its reinvention.