High on style: Studio Sly delivers a head-turning identity for real estate brand Falso Melbourne

When Joseph Falso – founder of Melbourne-based boutique real estate agency Falso Melbourne – reached out to Studio Sly’s Creative Director Lauren Finks to reimagine the existing identity for the brand, his brief was simple and succinct. “I want something different. Like really different, he said,” Finks tells us. As she started digging into the world of Falso Melbourne, it became quite apparent to her that the identity had to speak to the brand’s tasteful, exclusive approach to their service, but do so in a way that felt “intrinsically Melbourne.” “In developing his rebrand, I took everything I knew about the world of real estate and pushed it to the side in an effort to better understand what it means to live in Melbourne – our street culture, our food culture and the joy of being at home,” Finks shares. The existing tagline of ‘The New, The Now, Your Next’ became a springboard of inspiration, leading Finks and her team to a visual campaign of objects, food and moments that ooze Melburnian style. Stepping away from the sales-driven approach of branding in real estate, the studio instead honed in on Falso’s idea of ‘quiet success,’ which is also intertwined with the brand image. Conceptually, the idea informed the typographic system, “utilising the less-is-more construction of a monospace font in combination with a san serif of equal structure, allowing the brand to achieve a quietly premium positioning,” shares Finks. The studio chose Modern Era Mono for the wordmark, but customised this further with a flipped ‘W’ to work as the ‘M.’ “The flipped ‘W’ is a metaphor for flipping a traditionally sales-driven industry on its head,” adds Finks.