Counterpart Studios is an Austin-based interior design firm. They specialize in limited-edition home products ranging from fabrics to wallpapers, always created in partnership with highly regarded artists and brands.

Seeking verbal and visual artistry for their own identity, Counterpart brought on Abbr. Projects to build a brand based on the balancing act of contrasting characters and personalities. Accordingly, we created a system that draws inspiration from intersections, best articulated in the tagline we developed for the firm: “Artful encounters in interior design.”

Curating a set of two typefaces — one highly architectural, the other deeply human — we mined their polarized forms to create the wordmark and logomark. Loose iconography recalls artist sketches and in-process annotations, while an uneven grid reinforces an experimental aesthetic.

Considering the importance of partnerships to the firm’s process and product, we emphasized compatibility and overlap with partner branding by delivering a range of lockup formats. Counterpart Studios launched in 2022 through collaborations with Fort Lonesome and Eloi, putting Austin quirk to work in interiors around the world.