Pentagram’s Austin office recently completed an unusual project: an identity for a brand-new city. Utah City is a 700-acre planned community which is being built near Vineyard, Utah, on the site of a defunct steel mill. The vision for the city is that it will be modern, walkable, and sustainable.
The resulting logomark has several inspirations: the shape of the state of Utah, the letter U, and the basic skyline of a city. The all-caps wordmark is set in Gotham, a face that has the same blocky, geometric nature as the U icon.
The palette for the new system was devised to live comfortably with the local flora, fauna, and geography. From the Pentagram website: “The guidelines include a custom color palette for the new city inspired by its home on the eastern shore of Utah Lake with colors named Obsidian, Cloud, Lake, Life, Clay and Hive.”
