Observed Matter (OBSMAT) builds CT industrial scanners as part of the rebirth of advanced manufacturing in the US. They are not just importing, assembling, and labelling but doing the hard work of designing, building, and manufacturing the future of CT scanning at home.

We worked on a looser, more collaborative weekly sprint process of discovery, sketching, and building, leaving more room for client involvement and opportunities for research. During this process we quickly stumbled on the core question: what is the aesthetic of a US industrial renaissance? Should we look back and honour the past, or invent something completely new? Can we express pride in identity without slipping into partisanship?

SpaceX, Anduril, and Palantir have an answer for the future but not everyone sees optimism in these visions of the future. For OBSMAT we wanted to build an brand world for everyone: sleek without falling into retro-sci-fi tropes, and proudly American in a uniting way.

We built a brand language and the tools tools to articulate it; sharp, precise, and versatile, just like great manufacturing. We developed shaders, plugins, and apps that give designers a creative but precise way to build expressive visual stories inside a memorable brand language.

The result is a brand built on an iconic wordmark and visual language that articulate the future of manufacturing we have been waiting for.