Oval Unveils New Brand Identity for London Bronze Casting

Oval, the design studio from the office of Mr President, has shared its first work for London Bronze Casting, a successful foundry creating metal works for artists around the world. As its ambitions as a business grow beyond casting, London Bronze Casting needed a brand identity that will help it develop into new business areas, including collecting and selling the casted works that it creates. Oval has created an adaptable brand that brings together its new business areas and sets the stage for its next phase of growth with an adaptable brand that is more than the sum of its parts. 

Founded by a group of dedicated and passionate artists, toolmakers and innovators, London Bronze Casting believes in pushing the boundaries of artwork, through the shared love of bringing cast objects to life. LBC differentiates itself in its process mixing the old and the new – using  ‘Lost Wax Casting,’ a traditional approach which is very physical and manual, and combining this with newer techniques like 3D scanning. This blend of tradition, craft, innovation and collaboration helps to set them apart and produce more innovative work. 

Oval worked with LBC, spending several days onsite at the foundry, watching the collective of artists, makers and creators working together, observing the number of parts involved in creating a single work.

James Andrews, head of design at Oval, explained, “From spending a lot of time at the foundry and understanding how London Bronze Casting worked, we saw the extensive parts of the process that went into producing these amazing pieces of artwork, from melting the wax at the beginning of the casting process to forging their own tools bespoke to each job. From watching them work, we know that with London Bronze Casting, the end product is the culmination of the process. That’s what informed our logo, a bespoke modern and elegant wordmark that can be broken down and put back together as building blocks for the brand.

Oval explored a number of creative routes, and the one that resonated most with LBC was the ‘pieces’ approach that showed how each part of a process comes together to create a result that is greater than the sum of the parts. It uses a colour palette rooted in the casting process with a custom designed logo font.

The new brand identity for London Bronze Casting comes at a time where it is hosting “The Collection” - its first showcase of 25 artworks in bronze by contemporary artists and designers, all cast by London Bronze Company. The works - including ‘Slave’ by Toby Ziegler, ‘The Astronomer’ by Studio Toogood and ‘Power Object (Section 1 No.1)’ by Thomas J Price - share a commonality; being complex, innovative castings that push the boundaries of standard artwork produced at a foundry. 

From the invitations for the showcase to the event catalogue and website, London Bronze Casting’s new brand identity is now live, bringing a visual and spiritual direction its collection of ambitious creators in the business of combining traditional craftsmanship with innovative approaches to create work that has never been produced.

Working in close collaboration with creators allowed Oval to be flexible on its payment as well. Instead of taking a fee for its work, Oval is getting a share of one of the sculptures in “The Collection,” when it sells. With a stake in London Bronze Casting’s success, Oval is even further embedded in the creative process.