Kimball Modern by Goodside

When the brief is a feeling

Some briefs come with a mood board. Some come with a competitor list. Kate Moore, founder of Kimball Modern, came with a philosophy: warm modernism.

It sounds simple. It's not. Warm modernism sits in a precise tension between two things that usually fight each other. Too warm and the work goes soft, sentimental, residential in the bad way. Too modern and it goes cold, austere, the kind of space that looks great in photos and feels hollow to stand in. Kate navigates that every day in her interior design work, and the brand had to do the same thing.

She took that brief to Goodside, a San Francisco-based studio led by Jessica Strelioff and Danielle LaRoy. One part visual, one part verbal. The kind of studio that treats strategy as the foundation, not an afterthought.

What came back was exactly right. The identity draws on the same references Kate does: the considered layering of Sea Ranch, the joyful precision of Charles and Ray Eames. Color, texture, curiosity, all of it in balance. Minimal without being cold. Curated without being stiff.

This is the kind of project that makes you realize how hard a good brief actually is. Most founders know what they want their brand to look like. Very few know what they want it to feel like. Kate did, and it shows!