Strebewerk branding

Strebewerk is an art group consisting of composer Anders Monrad and visual/interaction designer Simon Nielsen. We have been making experimental art and performances together on-and-off through more than a decade.

For our work wiht music installations ("ERVAX For 2, the esophon), we needed a web presence and some basic branding. See the Strebewerk site, here.

The logo is designed to be simple, and invoke:

• An exclamation point
• The fact that we are two artists, with some distance
• Viewed one way, can be seen as casting stylized shadows on uneven terrain
• Viewed another way, a 3D view of a flying buttress (arch over straight pillar)

Technically, the strebewerk.com site is built on Wordpress with some heavily modified templates. This gives a good starting point for browser and mobile compatibility.

The Strebewerk name comes from the German word for a flying buttress. An architectural feature of many Gothic cathedrals, flying buttresses are external, visible pillars that support the roof and walls of a cathedral. As artists we found it appealing that Gothic cathedrals make a virtue of necessity and use construction as aesthetics.

In Denmark, where we work, using a German word has a certain connotation of meticulousness and precision-engineering. It doesn't hurt that the word as spoken has a Danish meaning as well ("aspiration-work"), and that our name might vaguely recall the seminal electronic music group Kraftwerk.