A speculative spaceship with the Cannae logo. House Industries
A speculative spaceship with the Cannae logo.
House Industries created the brand for the Cannae Drive several years back. But these glossy visuals are helping to pitch the product today. House Industries
House Industries created the brand for the Cannae Drive several years back. But these glossy visuals are helping to pitch the product today.
"When you go in front of these funding bodies, like DARPA or the Air Force or private equity guys, you’ve gotta have a brand name for this thing,” says House Industries cofounder Rich Roat. House Industries
"When you go in front of these funding bodies, like DARPA or the Air Force or private equity guys, you’ve gotta have a brand name for this thing,” says House Industries cofounder Rich Roat.
“They’ve seen a lot of snake oil over the years, so you have to look professional. And they said over and over again, this stuff got the foot in the door.” House Industries
“They’ve seen a lot of snake oil over the years, so you have to look professional. And they said over and over again, this stuff got the foot in the door.”
An earlier concept when the device was called the "Q-Drive." House Industries
An earlier concept when the device was called the "Q-Drive."
A microsatellite with Cannae branding. House Industries
A microsatellite with Cannae branding.
“It’s kind of a wacky intro, but stick with me, it gets good.”
Thus Andy Cruz begins the tale of how his design studio and type foundry, House Industries, ended up creating a brand identity for a futuristic space engine called the Cannae Drive—technology that could potentially cut travel time to Mars from months to mere weeks, overturning the law of conservation of momentum along the way.
The unlikely project came by way of an even less likely referral. It was holiday season 2010, and Cruz and House Industries co-founder Rich Roat were at an event in New York. They ran into Joel Hodgson, creator of Mystery Science Theater 3000. He was familiar with their work, which includes the typefaces used for the Lucky Charms logo and Green Day’s Dookie album cover, to name a few. And they were familiar with Hodgson’s work, which includes Mystery Science Theater 3000. Everyone got to chatting, and eventually Hodgson made an unusual request: He wanted the designers to meet his neighbor.
A breakdown of a microsatellite using the Cannae Drive. House Industries
That neighbor turned out to be Guido P. Fetta. Over the course of several years, Fetta had developed what he considered a revolutionary engine technology. (Fetta’s background is in marketing for pharmaceutical companies, though he studied chemical engineering in college). He dubbed it the Cannae Drive.
Instead of relying on fuel or nuclear reactors, Fetta’s design bounces microwaves around a specially-shaped container, creating changes in radiation pressure that ultimately generate thrust. It could have all sorts of applications, including vastly reducing the waste involved in launching satellites into orbit. And while it’s true that futuristic space drives and independent inventors generally are viewed with skepticism, the Cannae Drive got a fairly huge endorsement last week when NASA published the results of its own tests: Inexplicably, it worked. (Granted, this may still be an experimental glitch. Only time will tell.)
Just because Cannae isn’t consumer tech
doesn’t mean it’s not a product being sold.
At that point in 2010, however, the Cannae Drive was just a wild idea by a math-obsessed salesman. Hodgson, savvy in the ways of pitches and presentations, knew his neighbor’s technology needed a proper public face if it was going to sell. Thus the introduction to Cruz and Roat.
The final Cannae logo. House Industries
It didn’t take long to settle on a direction. “When you’ve got your creative meeting with Joel and Guido and the knuckleheads at House Industries, of course we head toward the world of science fiction,” Cruz says. They spent hours talking about their favorite sci-fi films and their visual languages. Ultimately, the challenge was creating a brand identity that alluded to familiar ideas futuristic technologies without feeling like a parody of them. It needed to look like something that would be emblazoned on a rocket, not an arcade machine.
There were other ingredients in the mix. The designers looked at existing brands that were both timeless and forward-looking, drawing inspiration from the automotive industry and specifically airlines like Pan Am and Continental. They experimented with typography inspired by Ancient Rome, a nod to the Battle of Cannae after which the drive is named (Fetta is also a Roman warfare buff).
Sketches for the Cannae logo. House Industries
The thing that makes the final logo immediately feel futuristic is the absence of crossbars on the A’s, Cruz explains. “That’s one of those elements that’s sort of an emotional or thematic touchpoint, based on things we’ve seen.” But the designers gave the rest of the mark just as much attention as they do with all their typefaces. “Once we’ve established something that does trigger that ‘this is the future’ feeling, then we come back and say, ‘OK, let’s take what we’ve learned in the world of typography on Earth and apply some of those principles,’” Cruz says. An orbital loop around the last letter lends the mark a nice graphic touch, evoking space and visually suggesting a breakthrough technology.
It needed to look like something that would be
emblazoned on a rocket, not an arcade machine.
It isn’t immediately obvious why a breakthrough technology would need a “brand identity” in the first place. But as Roat points out, just because Cannae isn’t consumer tech doesn’t mean it’s not a product being sold. “When you go in front of these funding bodies, like Darpa or the Air Force or private equity guys, you’ve gotta have a brand name for this thing,” he says. “They’ve seen a lot of snake oil over the years, so you have to look professional. And they said over and over again, this stuff got the foot in the door.”
Creating the Cannae identity was the first step. Recently, House Industries has worked on illustrations and videos of the types of spacecrafts Cannae might work with. If a professional brand is what gets you in the door, these sorts of visual assets are what help open the pocket books. “That’s why I think Joel immediately said, ‘Oh I’ve gotta talk to House Industries,’” Roat says. “We need these guys to make this thing look real.’”
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