Diana Krabbendam, Michiel Schwarz and Jan van Tiel approached me and Peter Ström to design an identity for The Beach, their new network organization.

The name of the company is based on a metaphor used by Charles Leadbeater in his book (Un)common Ground:

“Beaches are ordered without being controlled. No one is in charge. Beaches are model civic spaces: tolerant, playful, self-regulating, democratic in spirit, mildly carnivalesque. Underlying is a simple idea: the beach is a commons where people can self-organise in play (.....) There are no zoning regulations, fences nor white lines to tell you where to go...”

We created an organism that we used to depict different kinds of organizational structures. In stead of generating these structures, we drew them by hand.

Using Tile Tool as an assistive device, each creature is drawn with a quick movement of the mouse.