TOPOGRAPH TOPOGRAPH
BRAND REFRESH

Topograph

Listen. Design. Listen.

For Topograph, an architecture practice grounded in attentiveness—to place, people, process, and the particulars that make a building worth making—I helped translate founder Marc Toppel’s already thoughtful point of view into a refreshed brand and developed a suite of practical tools for better storytelling alongside longtime collaborator Gate Davis.

The work began where it should: by establishing and articulating a Brand Foundation. Via a series of leadership and staff interviews, we codified Topograph’s brand pillars, personality, promise, and new tagline. We carried the brand forward with a refreshed visual identity: a natural evolution of his existing signature logo, a toolkit of logo variations, a tighter typographic system, and a color palette with intentional roles and proportional use. We worked through many iterations to arrive at the right balance of structural blue, material tones, greens, paper, and restrained accents, resulting in an identity that feels both considered and comfortably lived in.

Next, we collaborated to create DOCUMENTING OUR WORK: A Storytelling Guidebook designed to make Topograph’s everyday observations as central as its finished projects. “Document, document, document” became the rallying cry of the guide, which establishes a durable rhythm for gathering, storing, sorting, developing, and publishing stories. It also identifies distinct audience needs and gives the team a simple way to preserve meaningful details while a project is still alive. It treats drawings, site photographs, decisions, discoveries, client conversations, and material studies as evidence of a practice defined by listening.

That work is now beginning to take public form through the practice’s newsletter. Gate wrote the inaugural edition, and I am designing its first issue, an editorial expression of a larger system intended to help Topograph share not just what it makes, but how it sees, learns, and contributes.