BY Armin

Down and Town, Crossed

This identity is not necessarily new actually, back in 2007, the Boston Redevelopment Authority — how cool is their logo? — unveiled the plans to roll out a new brand to identify Boston’s Downtown Crossing neighborhood as a vibrant location where more than 230,000 people work, live and play and establish it as “Boston’s Meeting Place.” Philadelphia-based 160over90 has been in charge of the identity, which involves print materials, signage and, most recently, a large wrap for the historic landmark site of Filene’s Department Store as it undergoes construction.

The thing that caught my attention, more then the wrap shown below, is the logo, which is a rather clever solution for the lengthy word “downtown.” Although I would have personally created a much, much bolder “down” and a much lighter “town” I found the solution to be very clever and in this particular case very fitting. Any downtown in the world could do this treatment, but that the “T” is a cross, only helps to underscore that this is Downtown Crossing.

The rest of the identity has been nicely executed as well and playing off of the idea of “Boston’s Meeting Place” they have done some nice, playful work using the “meet” badge as a way to introduce the diversity of the neighborhood.

And then there is the wrap around Filene’s Basement, titled “Have we met yet?”, where on July of this year, through a three-day photoshoot rendered 668 portraits of the people around the neighborhood which are now plastered one next to the other with the “meet” badge between them. The idea is not totally original, one of Tibor Kalman’s last projects was photographing people crossing Times Square, resulting in 1000 On 42nd Street — but what is 100% original nowadays, right? — so what makes this work for the Downtown Crossing project is the build-up of the “meeting place” positioning and the use of the “meet” badge really ties this together. So even though the identity is slightly old, I thought it was, overall, an interesting branding story.

\n\nThis identity is not necessarily new actually, back in 2007, the Boston Redevelopment Authority — how cool is their logo? — unveiled the plans to roll out a new brand to identify Boston's Downtown Crossing neighborhood as a vibrant location where more than 230,000 people work, live and play and establish it as \"Boston's Meeting Place.\" Philadelphia-based 160over90 has been in charge of the identity, which involves print materials, signage and, most recently, a large wrap for the historic landmark site of Filene’s Department Store as it undergoes construction.

Many thanks to our ADV @ UnderConsideration Partners