How should a lab that interrogates colour represent itself? Chroma Waste Lab's visual narrative was developed as design research rather than brand decoration, working through the same question the Lab asks of industry: what does it mean to use colour accountably, and what should you refuse?
Why a lab
A lab, rather than a studio or a campaign, because the argument has to be testable. Colour in industry is settled by assertion, a season, a name, a claim, and an assertion can only be repeated, never checked. A lab keeps samples, takes measurements and leaves a record; it builds the means of its own correction. A visual narrative is the first place to prove that, or to quietly avoid it.
The mono position
The identity works in black and white. A lab arguing that colour is a commons rather than a property cannot coherently claim a proprietary brand colour, so it does not. The logo system runs across a stacked lockup, horizontal one-line and two-line variants, a text-only setting and a standalone mark, all in mono. Where colour appears on Lab materials, it is the pigment itself, photographed, not a specified brand hue. This is the identity's central argument: the only colour the Lab claims is the colour it recovered.
Typography
Set in Neue Monopolar, Regular and Semi Bold. A monolinear, technical letterform that holds the Lab's material-first, evidence-led register without decorative appeal to craft or sustainability visual convention.
Event lockups
The system extends to co-branded lockups for venues the research travels to. Each retains the mono discipline, so the Lab reads consistently across international contexts without adapting to house styles.
- LDF26, London Design Festival 2026
- INCLUDE26, INCLUDE London 2026, Royal College of Art
- DRS26, Textile Intersections 2026, Design Research Society
Icon system
Six variant sets across outlined, stroke, flat and round treatments, developed for exhibition wayfinding, workshop materials and the participatory programmes. The icons draw on the material process itself: microscope, dye bath, flask, dropper and circulation loop.
Colour explorations for exhibition collateral
Ten gradient studies, five linear and five radial, developed as exhibition and event collateral rather than as brand colour. Each holds a saturated chromatic field against the mono identity, testing how far colour can be pushed before it becomes decoration.
These are collateral, not identity. The Lab's visual narrative holds to mono. Colour enters only where it is being examined. The gradients are screen colour, made in RGB, and carry no relationship to the recovered pigment. That distinction is deliberate and is stated here so it is read as a boundary rather than an oversight.
