Housewarming October 14th 15:00 onwards / Constant Variable / Rue Gallait 80 Brussels
The 19th century town house at Rue Gallait 80 is now known as Constant Variable. For three years, it will house an arts lab for free, libre and open source software. Next to the Open Source Publishing studio, there is an open video workshop and an open hardware workshop. The top floor houses a residency.
Of course OSP had to take on the challenge to create Variable’s visual identity!
Context
Rue Gallait is in the north of Brussels, in Schaarbeek. Schaarbeek was built by the rich Brussels bourgeoisie in the late 19th century—it’s full of beautiful houses. The bourgeoisie left for the suburbs after the second World War, and right now Turkish and Maroccan immigrants make up a large part of the neighbourhoods population.
Outside Gallait 80 there is a busy commercial area with a sprawl of signage. The house itself has been in use by various governmental and arts organisations and each phase has left a trace of interior signage and decoration, in that sense mirroring the outside world. For the identity we have tried to work with this principle, by creating sticker kits that can be used in various configurations over time.
Crickx
It came quite natural to us to use stickers since we house the archive of Madame Crickx. Madame Crickx est Schaerbeekooise. She used to have a shop selling hand-cut vinyl adhesive letters for creating signage. ((Read up on Madame Crickx in this magazine article in pdf: Dutch, French))
We are using the Crickx stock for all the internal signage in the house. OSP has been busy creating a digital font based upon Madame Crickx’s letters. We used this for the logo of the house—and on the opening day of the house, we’ll release the font to the world! ((The additional font we use is PropCourier Sans, Ana Carvalho and Ricardo Lafuente’s proportional remix of OSP’s own NotCourier Sans.))
We made a logo that is printed on fluor-colored office stickers. The logo is supported by smaller circular stickers “free”, “libre”, “open source”, “software”, “arts lab”. The stickers have been put to use on the invitation for the housewarming, and are finding there way onto laptops and into different nooks and crannies of the house.
Stickering the invitations
So to see Crickx and the identity in action, to get a tour through the rest of the house, and to partake in a PARTY—we expect you this friday from 15:00 onwards Rue Gallait 80, Brussels!