By Darren Southgate

Southgate & Sarabia Architects Developing Identity

Welcome to our new trademark ‘SASA’ logo designed by Paul Smith.

Trade identity needs developing like a family member; nurturing, safeguarding, securing, progressing as industry builds an awareness allied to its firm’s capability and capacity! When Natalie and I set out on our new practice journey, we were very conscious of many things like equality, gender balance, diversity, progression and of course our identity and how a firm’s name develops! Inevitably we thought our name would be shortened from Southgate & Sarabia Architects to SASA, just like lots of Projects Managers or Architects, for example, Faithful + Gould known as F and G, or Turner & Townsend known as T & T, or Hutchinson Locke and Monk Architects which became HLM and so on. It is important the acronym is easy to remember or say, RMJM (Robert Matthew Johnson Marshall) pronounced ‘rum-jam’ for short, sounded trendy, related to the acronym and could be expanded back to the partners names. On this basis we have ended up with SASA as a trademark and pronounced ‘sa-sa’. For us it sounded different and reflects the balance we wanted to establish.