Visual Identity And Website For Experience Architecture Practice
A rational architecture brand built its identity on Surrealism.
A poetic and rational visual identity was created for EXPERIENCE, a Paris-based architecture practice. The project included two custom-drawn typefaces, a new website, and a cohesive system of office materials that balance precision with openness and surprise.
Insights- EXPERIENCE is a Paris-based architecture practice built around an "architecture of reason"—restraint and economy of means—yet its name comes from a Jimi Hendrix song, signaling intensity, curiosity, and freedom.
- Atelier Dyakova framed the identity around a tension between Surrealism and rationality, opening the project with Louis Aragon’s line from *Paris Peasant*: "The marvellous is the eruption of contradiction within the real."
- The deliverables were unusually complete: two custom-drawn typefaces, a new website, and a full ecosystem of office materials, all meant to stay precise while allowing "lasting surprise."
- Sonya Dyakova said her bespoke type process starts with research, then atmosphere, then specific references to places, people, and historical periods; she also described brand identity as "composing a soundtrack for a film."
- EXPERIENCE's own reference field — the Rolling Stones, Hendrix, Apollinaire, Ginsberg, Hockney, Lou Reed, Chris Marker — sits behind the identity, giving the brand language a mix of architectural rigour with humour, joy and lightness.