The archive · Design & Visual · Product decision · 2023–2024
Jiazhi Studio's brand system turns AutoCAD legends into client portraits
A Chinese renovation studio built its identity on AutoCAD legends: an algorithm generates custom portraits of designers and clients from drafting symbols.
Jiazhi Studio
What it had to solve
Jiazhi Studio handles full-package renovation for hundreds of families and has a million fans on Chinese social media, with people-centered design built on the idea that a home is the portrait of a life. Its visual identity needed to express that belief in the studio's own industrial language.
How it works
Jiazhi Studio handles full-package renovation for hundreds of families and counts a million fans on Chinese social media. Its people-centered design rests on the idea that a home is the portrait of a life — and its identity work took that literally.
The design used the legends of AutoCAD, the drafting symbols of the renovation trade, as the elements of particular portraits of the studio's designers and customers, paired with fonts. The legends decorate the work while expressing its industrial character.
Following the same design logic, the team wrote an algorithm that customizes personal avatars efficiently, so the exclusive experience of a portrait built from the studio's drafting language could scale to every client. The work is held in the D&AD awards archive.
Why it lands
- The idea expresses the brand belief directly: a home is the portrait of a life, so the customer literally becomes the picture.
- AutoCAD legends are the studio's own trade vocabulary, making the identity authentic to renovation rather than borrowed decoration.
- The algorithm turns bespoke portraits into a repeatable system, so personalization can happen at scale for every client.
What it did
Every designer and client could get a bespoke avatar drawn from the studio's own craft vocabulary, turning an exclusive personal touch into something producible at scale; the identity entered the D&AD awards archive.
What you can take
Use the raw vocabulary of your trade as your brand material: symbols only insiders understand become a recognizable system, and an algorithm turns a bespoke touch into a repeatable signature.
Since then
The identity entered the D&AD awards archive as a branding system that made an industry's technical symbols personal. Because the portraits and fonts were turned into an algorithm-driven avatar tool, the studio could keep offering each new family a customized visual identity without drawing each one by hand, and the language remained recognizably its own.
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