Case study — Brand strategy · Identity · Naming · Creative and art direction · 2020-2021
Sretenka 13/26
How one line set the whole communication strategy
Architecture by John McAslan + Partners, London
My role
Brand strategy, naming, visual identity, tone of voice, creative and art direction of photography and 3D visualization.
Scope
Positioning → naming → creative direction → identity system → photo campaign → collateral → communication guidelines
What's there
A quiet building on a loud street
Sretenka is a street Muscovites love.
Three centuries of trade, fifteen minutes from the Kremlin. To a Muscovite, Sretenka is what the West Village is to a New Yorker. The houses are old. New ones are rare.
Visualization: VIS-ON
A modern building by British architects, deliberately quiet: it doesn't compete with the historic street. The architecture had already set the tone.
The Challenge
How do you brand a building whose best asset is its address?
An address locates you. It doesn't set you apart.
Around Sretenka. Photo: Anna Antonova
What the competition builds on
Every building in the neighborhood says the same four things — luxury, historic center, thirty residences, concierge. Tell the luxury story, invent a grand name:
A new building on Sretenka is an event on its own. No need to shout.
What we did
The house number is enough for a name. Not for a story.
Officially: Sretenka 13/26. Understated, architectural, self-sufficient.
But an address only tells people where you are. It doesn’t give them a reason to remember you. So what do I build the communication on?
The building had one thing the street didn't: a 25-meter pool in the historic core. Instead of hiding it in an amenity list, I put it in the name:
Why
One line, two jobs
Moscow names its houses by what sets them apart — The Flat House, The House on the Embankment, The House on Legs — and none of those names was official.
The goal was that kind of name: one that fits into speech, that people would use without thinking, that the city would take as its own. To help it along, every piece of communication said "House with a Pool and a Garden," so people would shorten it themselves.
The Flat House
The House on the Embankment
The House on Legs
For the buyer, the line puts the strongest feature first. For me, it says exactly what to build the visual communication on.
Together, they gave the building a distinctive proposition beyond its address.
Art Direction
Water, as the artists painted it
One line, one subject: the photo brief was built entirely on the pool.
Because the strategy had a subject, the campaign needed one asset type: a photo set strong enough to carry the whole brand. The brief to the photographer: images that recall 20th-century painting and graphic art — calibrated light and shadow, reflections on the water’s surface, overhead and side angles. Everything that removes the feeling of an “everyday” photograph.
Fernand Léger, Les plongeurs, 1942
Alex Katz, Swimmer, 1990
David Hockney, The Diver, 1972
Photo set
The Pool, as identity
These images are the first contact anyone has with the brand. The references give the photography a cultural language without turning it into illustration.
Visual Identity
The photographs set the rule; the identity follows it
From the logo to the pattern to the apartment doors — the same optical play, so nothing on the street looks like it.
Logo
The numerals bend the way a pool floor does under moving water.
Typeface
With its balanced, low-key elegance, Garamond felt like the typographical twin of Sretenka: old enough to belong, quiet enough not to compete.
Color Palette
Water blues on near-white, ink for text, one warm accent — like sunlight on skin.
34AADC
Aqua
F35834
Coral
Pattern
A small pool in your hands.
In use
Envelope, cards, letterhead, notebook, door numbers — the same numerals and the same water everywhere.
Digits for apartment numbers
The logo's numerals, on every door.
Tone of Voice
Restraint is the luxury
The category tends to sell with "unique," "exclusive," "the best."
Here the rule is the opposite: say less, and say it to a person.
What survived
The brand outlived the business plan
Since 2020 the project has moved from sales to long-term leasing.
Completed in 2026, it is now preparing for its opening.
Real estate brands often have to change when the business model changes. This one didn’t. The imagery, the tone of voice, and House with a Pool work under the new format.
The strategy didn't need to change.
Reflection
What this project taught me
Take the message from the product, not from outside it: a writer’s name, a borrowed metaphor, a lifestyle assembled from stock imagery. The building had a pool. That was enough.
And look for the place where people can carry the name themselves. Next time I'll look for it first.
Credits
I developed the positioning, naming and identity system, and led the creative direction across photography and visualization.
Architecture
John McAslan + Partners
KAMEN (Architect of record)
Renderings
VIS ON
Photography
Yan Yugay
LI-NE Agency
Next case