‘A little bit wrong,’ yet perfect: Studio Blackburn on their off-kilter brand for Ventura Foreman

Every garment produced by design and manufacturing studio Ventura Foreman, run by the husband and wife team of Robert Ventura and Sophie Foreman, is made in-house at their premises in Woolwich, South London. Specialising in workwear, they have created durable and practical garments for notable clients such as Matches, Paul Smith, and even Norman’s Cafe in London. To further sharpen their brand, the duo collaborated with Studio Blackburn to develop an identity that would accurately convey their distinctive and genuine personality. The primary goal was to convey a sense of something being “not quite right” while maintaining a clean, simple, and familiar aesthetic. To achieve this, Studio Blackburn implemented a unique typographic system that plays with the hierarchy of information. The wordmark celebrates the locality of Woolwich, London, and prominently features “Woolwich LONDON, UK,” before the name, which creates an unconventional shift in emphasis. “Ventura Foreman really bought into the idea of championing their location and placing more emphasis on the ‘Where?’ rather than ‘Who?’ We felt the play of uppercase and lowercase gave it another layer of ‘je ne sais quoi,’ and there’s not many clients that would let you put a comma in their logo,” Creative Director Mark Jones tells us. “The shape that was created when the full wordmark is typeset felt beautiful and a little bit wrong, which was great.”