HORT has always been what the name implies: a kind of large and colorful playground as well as a protective place for a designer, a place with no limits, with absolute openness, great confidence and all possibilities. An unconventional frame – which allows anything and everything asked. What started with works for the music industry, has evolved into a multi-disciplinary design studio that acts internationally for large as well as small customers. No matter how well known HORT is now, it is still (and always will be) a place, where one can learn – and one should. Within the last few years the HORT underwent many changes and grew into Brand Identity, Signage and Print Design.
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→ Bauhaus Dessau (2011)
The new corporate identity of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation was to be more connected to the ideas and methods than the traditional graphic forms of the Bauhaus. HORT aimed for a functional, efficient and more radical solution to meet modern technical needs of production and to interpret the new Bauhaus on this basis.
It was a big challenge to strip the current institution from its historical canon of forms. Firstly historicization and irony had to be avoided and secondly to the present and true character of the institution had to be communicated: Bauhaus Dessau is no longer part of an avantgardist movement, but a foundation under public law, which is running its academic tasks, is devoted to current social issues and runs a world famous museum.
The core corporate identity was developed with a generic appearance that clearly intended not to compete with the historic Bauhaus. It developed an own visual language and met the requirements of multi medial productions and formats, and it was then carried to the next stage of processing and interpretation opening up to the continuation by various designers.
: Branding
→ Nike USA Basketball Campaign with LeBron James (2011)
Design exploration for LeBron James signature shoe 9. Horts participated in the marketing campaign around Cavaliers F LeBron James that included digital, print and TV ads, along with grassroots marketing. T
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: Music
→ MTV unplugged invitation ans Album artwork for Berlin rapper SIDO (2012)
HORT‘s second collaboration with SIDO, a Berlin based rapper, was for MTV Unplugged. For MTV Unplugged performances, artists and bands usually select a ‘special’ place where the concert is to take place. SIDO decided to go back to the place of his youth, the Märkische Viertel (MV), a public housing quarter in the North of Berlin for his appearance at MTV unplugged.
Instead of using concert material for the record sleeve, HORT commissioned photographer Stefan Vorbeck to go on a two day shooting tour in Märkisches Viertelin Berlin, where SIDO had grown up. Everyone in Berlin knows the ‘Problem’ district as’ ugly’ collection of prefabricated buildings. The photograph radiate a very special feeling: The feeling of loneliness – even though thousands of people live there.
For the unplugged session itself two invitations were sent out: the fist showing a blanket that covered a bust, the second showing the uncovered plast bust of Sido that had been produced for the occasion.
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: Branding
→ Marion King, Human Resources Consultant (2007)
How to visualize the work with people? How to approach an aura? How do you get a focus in the blur of a situation? HORT confronted themselves with these questions when developing the visual identity of Marion King, a Berlin based consultant specialized in coaching and human resources.
To provide a visual identity of Marion King that possesses emotional appeal, it was decided to photograph her image world. Objects were selected with which she has to do in her daily work, objects that create her kind of stage. The scenes encompass terms like ‘moment’, ‘dynamic’, ‘relationship’, ‘ok’, ‘balance’, ‘fun’ or ‘creativity’.
