COLLINS and Dinamo make the classical contemporary in their responsive identity for SF Symphony

A century-old cultural landmark, the San Francisco Symphony is an American orchestra that, since 1980, has been a resident at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in the West Coast city’s Hayes Valley neighbourhood. Aiming to maintain the significance and artistry of the classical music genre for the institution’s rebrand, New York and San Francisco-based design company COLLINS devised a typeface and identity system that is as dynamic and flexible as it is rigorously striking and unapologetically cool. Matching SF Symphony’s sonic, experimental and indefinite practice, COLLINS teamed up with Dinamo, a Swiss type foundry renowned for pushing typographic expectation, to develop a bespoke typeface that reflects this energetic and responsive attitude. Successfully achieving as such through a provocative variable structure that flexes to the needs of its application and the sound of music, the typeface is grounded in the heritage of classical music – with a sophisticated serif that seems both delicate in its construction and powerful in its presence. Sitting abreast a charming palette of colours, COLLINS found a break from the formal nature of monochrome was necessary in the visual revival of SF Symphony. Instead, the team found inspiration closer to home by taking colours from the surrounding San Francisco area, in-turn reflecting the context that the music is created within. COLLINS