DesignPhiladelphia – Cohere’s Why
We have the extreme honor of supporting DesignPhiladelphia 2018 as the branding partner.
This means we worked with Philadelphia’s AIA Chapter to name the week, as well as bring to life a new brand feel – Design Purpose.
The folks at Center / Architecture + Design and DesignPhiladelphia were up for the challenge to do something different this year and highlight purpose-driven design projects that are changing the landscape of Philadelphia. While this week is historically most popular with professionals in design, interiors, and architecture,
Cohere wanted to open it up to other industries that are using design thinking as a way to innovate in their industries like medicine, urban planning, science and technology.
Cohere
We designed it to give voice to that ambition and inspire one another to take action, applying our skills and passions to any possible place we can design the world we want to see.

We were inspired to name the campaign Design Purpose from a quote from the AIA President:
Design is not a noun. Design is a verb.
John Campbell, President, AIA
By removing prepositions (i.e. Design with Passion), we position the word design as the verb, giving the theme an affirmative in action.
Philadelphia’s creative community wants to do more than design for design’s sake. We’re not known as a pretentious, high-design city that doesn’t remember where it came from. That’s not us. Our creative community creates functional projects that protect the environment, improve health and wellness, reform education, and empower communities.

The branding for this year’s festival is designed to give voice to that ambition and inspire one another to take action.
Concept Rollout
What to expect this week: Spend the rest of the week exploring BOK, a repurposed high school building that’s getting national attention for what Philly does best; create opportunity. We’ll connect on projects and installations intended to inspire our design community, highlighting purposeful projects changing the landscape of our city and our lives.
Look for a gallery wall at BOK where we are diving into the projects and activations that have a high impact on the future of Philadelphia.

Our Home Sweet Hood series that gives exclusive preview tours of construction in emerging neighborhoods and a design manifesto that will ask our design community to participate in the future of creativity here in Philadelphia.
Thank you Center / Architecture + Design for the opportunity to exercise our voice in such an important tradition, and for shining a light on Philadelphia’s creative class.