Studio Lisca gives River House an identity drawn from brick and river

River House is a design-led residential building company in Suffolk, in the east of England, set up to build contemporary homes for design-conscious people in the region. It pairs the construction craft of James Brindley with the design and commercial focus of Guy Johnson, with London-based Studio Lisca coming on board to shape its identity and apply it across print, digital and signage ahead of the launch. “We wanted the brand to communicate a sensitivity and commitment to design intent and architectural detail before the viewer had read the first word on the website,” explains Johnson, whose ambition was to stand out in a crowded Suffolk construction market where prospective clients struggle to tell one firm from another. Studio Lisca set itself a matching brief: to translate River House’s Suffolk roots, its brickwork, undulating countryside and the rivers that run through it, into a visual language the company could own, distinct from the heritage look the sector typically goes for. Drawing on River House’s connection to Suffolk, the studio built the identity’s central device from a union of two local elements: the region’s brickwork and the movement of its rivers. “The concept of combining bricks and the movement of water to form the pattern just came up quite organically,” Co-founder & Creative Director Andrea Sanguineti tells us, the studio having “immediately thought of researching the area to use the landscape and architecture as the main inspiration.” That research also influenced the name of the company. “That is also how River House came about, discovering the different streams of the area,” she adds. “I think we came up with at least 30 different ways to represent a brick,” Sanguineti recalls, the studio drawn throughout to how “the rigid shapes contrasted the idea of the river in a very interesting way.” Co-founder & Creative Director Laura Spanu describes how the pattern evolved: “It started as more fluid, with more curves, but we developed it to feel more sturdy, yet elegant.”