Visual Identity & Brand Language
Keown Liang
The identity must live comfortably within several deliberate contradictions. It should never resolve into one pole or the other.
The tension is the point.
Core Contradictions
Primitive Yet Rich
Think: a hand-laid New England fieldstone wall meeting a floor of honed black marble. Raw lime plaster beside brushed bronze. The primitiveness is not poverty; it is restraint that implies abundance. Materials should feel as though they were pulled from the Berkshire hillside yesterday and will outlast everything around them.
Deeply Minimal Yet Luxe
This is not the cold, evacuated minimalism of a white gallery. It is the minimalism of a Japanese tea house or a Romanesque chapel: spare because every single element has been considered to the point of obsession. Luxury here is not ornament. It is the quality of silence in a room, the weight of a door handle, the depth of a shadow.
Elegantly Organic
The irregular edge of a hand-split white oak timber. The natural curve of a dry-laid stone wall following the contour of a wooded hillside. The way native ferns claim a granite threshold over decades. Organic here means grown, not sculpted. It takes the playful, nature-reverent attitude of Bruce Goff and Bart Prince and expresses it through the austere material palette of Peter Zumthor.
Grounded Biophilia
A courtyard garden tended by hand. Wild ferns pushing through decomposed granite. A single moss-covered fieldstone placed with intention beneath a birch canopy. This is biophilia as a homespun, DIY sensibility, not a marketing tagline. It should feel like someone who actually gets their hands in the Berkshire soil, not someone who hired a plant stylist.
Material Palette
Color System
Earth-dominant. Color should feel geological, not designed. No pastels. No bright accents. Every tone is drawn from the strata of the New England landscape: fieldstone grey, lichen green, weathered oak silver, deep forest shadow.
Chalkite
#E8E2D6
Calcium
#D4CFC5
Raw Clay
#A0785A
Fieldstone
#6B4D3A
Lichen
#4A5C4F
Deep Forest
#1E2B22
Charcoal
#2C2A26
Volcanic
#1A1714
Spatial Atmosphere
Typography
Severe and quiet. The type should feel like it was carved, not printed. Letter-spacing should breathe. Think: the lettering on a Carlo Scarpa tomb or a Donald Judd exhibition catalog.
Display / Cormorant
Carved from the earth itself
Light 300 / Regular 400 / Medium 500
Body / DM Sans
Materials should feel as though they were pulled from the Berkshire hillside yesterday and will outlast everything around them. The primitiveness is not poverty; it is restraint that implies abundance.
Light 300 / Regular 400 / Medium 500
Mood & Atmosphere
Natural light filtered through hardwood canopy. Deep shadows. Extreme close-ups of material surfaces: the grain of white oak, the aggregate in local granite, the patina on copper. Wide shots that feel empty and monastic. No staging, no props, no lifestyle imagery.
Grounded Biophilia
Site as Origin
Material Conversation
Architecture that defers to the landscape, carved from the Berkshire earth itself
The Wordmark
Inspired by Jean Lin's CO/ONY, where a forward slash replaces the L to create both a visual break and a conceptual divider. The "/" device in Keown Liang becomes a chisel mark, a stone joint, a seam where two materials meet.
The slash does triple duty: it separates two names, it evokes a scored line in stone, and it creates a compact monogram (K/L) that functions as a maker's mark at any scale.
Concept 1 / Full Name
KEOWN / LIANG in thin serif capitals. The slash as a fine diagonal line, a breath between two stones.
Concept 2 / Compact Monogram
K/L as a compact mark. The slash reads as a chisel score. Works at stamp scale, blind emboss, watermark.
Concept 6 / Mixed Case
k/L with lowercase k and uppercase L. The case tension mirrors the brand's core contradiction: primitive yet refined.
The Maker's Mark
Beyond the wordmark, the mark system explores the "/" as a physical object: interlocking masonry blocks, a circular hanko seal, and rough chisel cuts that reference the craft of stone carving.
Approach
The "/" as chisel mark, stone joint, and masonry seam. Interlocking forms, hanko seals, and scored lines explored as formal vocabularies.
Scale
Always small. The mark should never dominate. It is a quiet signature, not a billboard.
Application
Blind emboss on stationery. Small watermark on drawings. Subtle stamp on digital presence.
Photography Direction
Lighting
Natural light only, filtered through birch and maple canopy. Deep shadows. Light treated as material substance, not illumination.
Composition
Extreme close-ups of material surfaces: the grain of white oak, lichen on fieldstone, patina on copper. Wide shots that feel empty and monastic. The space between objects matters as much as the objects themselves.
Restrictions
No staging. No props. No lifestyle imagery. People should be absent or barely present: a hand touching a stone wall, a figure in silhouette against the tree line at a distance.
Applications
Brand materials should carry texture. Uncoated stocks with visible fiber, blind embossing, edge-painting in a single muted tone. Digitally, favor grain, subtle noise, and matte surfaces over gloss and polish.
Stationery Suite
Digital Presence
Reference Points
For tone, not imitation. These are the coordinates that define the aesthetic territory.
Architectural Lineage
Rick Joy
Tucson, AZ
Rammed earth master. Amangiri.
Peter Zumthor
Haldenstein, CH
Atmosphere and material presence.
Marwan Al-Sayed
LA / Phoenix
"Modern, yet archaic."
Wendell Burnette
Phoenix, AZ
"In and of the greater landscape."
Studio Mumbai
Mumbai, IN
Craft, earth, wood. Grown from the ground.
Tadao Ando
Osaka, JP
Monolithic concrete. Light as material.
Valerio Olgiati
Flims, CH
Primitive temple forms.
Bruce Goff
Oklahoma / Texas
Rooted organicism. The whimsy.
Bart Prince
Albuquerque, NM
Architecture from the inside out.
Cultural Coordinates
Studio KO
Culturally rooted minimalism
John Pawson
Spiritual reduction
Axel Vervoordt
Wabi-sabi warmth
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Time and silence
Kinfolk (early issues)
Typography before it became a brand
Lucie Rie
Primitive refinement in ceramics
What This Is Not