SparkHaus, Northern Kentucky’s new home base for tech startups and founders, sits at the corner of Madison Avenue and West 8th Street in Covington. The building’s large windows facing Madison were once the showroom for the Sims Furniture company and, before that, Montgomery Ward. Now, instead of dining sets and couches, you can see a hub of activity going on within the main gathering lounge and work space.
Inside, the entire space seems imbued with energy. The natural light, the wall art and installations, the placement of furniture, the variety of spaces for intimate conversations and large meetings — all combine to create an atmosphere that ties the stories of the past with the ideas of the future.
That is the SparkHaus brand, but it doesn’t stop with the look and feel of the space. Those elements combine with the programming, projects and support resources to create a hub for innovation in Northern Kentucky, the region and the entire state.
The branding behind the project was a collaborative effort reflective of the goal and purpose of the hub to facilitate connection and growth.
Enter CovCreates
The project that would become SparkHaus was developed by Blue North, Northern Kentucky’s innovation hub tasked with supporting entrepreneurship in the region. Blue North Executive Director Dave Knox and his staff envisioned a physical home for area founders, a place where they could interact with each other and have access to information and resources.
Jackie Roberto, founder of Madison, told the story of how she first learned of the project. When Knox said he wanted the branding of the project to be a collaborative effort, Roberto said she knew it would be a great project for CovCreates.
CovCreates was first formed in 2018 by Roberto and a handful of other Northern Kentucky-based design and marketing professionals to encourage and support a growing “community of creatives” in and around the city. Like so many in-person groups, when the pandemic hit, CovCreates went dormant for a time.
Roberto then met Jenna Marino and Beau Broering, two founders of the strategic design studio AGNT, who moved to Covington in 2021. Together they decided to restart the organization and to hold quarterly events focused on topics of interest to members.
It was at this point that Knox came to the group with the proposal. Could they bring together creative people from across the city to work on one project, a brand identity that would fit the vision of what would become a regional home for entrepreneurship and innovation?
Meeting the challenge
“Traditionally, we are competitors, but kudos to Dave Knox, who said we have this amazing creative community in Covington, and I’d like you to work together on this,” said Roberto.
AGNT’s Broering serves on the board of CovCreates. He noted about 20 creatives from a range of local design agencies, marketing firms and businesses came together to work on the project. The team included professionals from Madison, AGNT, Scooter Media, Braxton Brewing, BLDG, Durham Studios and others.
“With this project, it was really fun to see all of that creative power come together in one room and start to hash out ideas,” he said.
Not only did the project provide those involved with the rare opportunity to work together, but amazing things can happen in collaboration, said Marino.
“I personally really enjoyed the collaboration and colliding with other creatives on a daily basis…when we’re actually working with different people that we don’t normally work with, great things happen…Bouncing ideas off of different creatives levels you up in a different way from your day-to-day design work,” she added.
Finding the spark
The CovCreates team toured the building to take in the architecture and design elements. Next came research into its previous uses. What they found was a deep connection to the city’s business community dating back even before Montgomery Ward and the furniture store.
Montgomery Ward erected the building in 1929, but the building that was cleared to make way for the store housed the city’s leading business organization, a precursor to the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce.
“When it was the Covington Industrial Club, it was the place of businessmen coming together to make all the decisions for Covington… And so this was really a place of ideas even back then,” said Marino.
The first step was to come up with a name, and Marino said they went through at least 10 different ideas and directions. Yet, they kept coming back to the idea of inspiration, dynamism and what happens when ideas collide. Like flint hitting iron, ideas that strike against each other can spark new ideas.
“I feel like another word we kept coming back to was catalyst…all these different motivations coming together in a space to make something happen. So that’s kind of that catalyst, that spark,” said Sean Breamer, art director for Madison.
The idea of a spark stuck with the group. In homage to Covington’s German roots, and the idea that the place would be a welcoming home, the team added “haus” to create “SparkHaus.”
Building in the city
Once the name and general direction for the brand was established, it was time to reinforce the SparkHaus’ vision as a home for innovation built on a rich past.
Braemer said the group was inspired by the architecture of the building. The windows echoed the grid system of the city blocks around it, he said.
The team settled on a color scheme that drew from some of the tiles, wallpaper and other elements in the original building.
As a river city, Covington is often associated with the color blue, but Marino said they didn’t want to tie it too closely to just one location. Green was a natural choice with its connection to growth, she said. In the end, they chose teal to tie in both colors. A vibrant yellow became the accent color, a bright spark of light and of inspiration.
When it came to the logo, typeface and other visuals, the creative team took cues from both the historical features of the old building and the new architectural designs taking shape inside.
“We pulled in some of the history in the small details…It does resonate with what we call the grit of Covington. It’s not all clean and pristine and pretty. We have this little grit to us. There’s hustle in that grit,” Marino said.
The Spirit of Progress
One of the most compelling design elements on the building was the iconic image of the “Spirit of Progress” from Montgomery Ward. The image is of a female figure poised on her left foot, holding a torch high in her right hand and a caduceus, an ancient symbol of commerce, in the other. A statue of her still stands atop the company’s original headquarters in Chicago.
That Spirit of Progress was an inspiration for the design team because, although historic, she is depicted as looking ahead, lighting the way into the future. SparkHaus would be a space where the past and future collide.
Durham Studio developed the graphic identity throughout the inside space inspired by this vision of progress and promise.
“We wanted the place to feel unique enough, because it was. It is a one of one… a place that was inspiring and a place that was active, and a place that just had energy to it…There was going to be a Rolodex of different categories, different companies, different clients, so we just really wanted to have fun,” said Austin Dunbar, principal of the company.
Dunbar echoed Marino on the somewhat gritty feel that comes from building on the vibrant history of the urban business core.
“We wanted to have a visual catalog of entrepreneurial success from the past to inspire people in the present for the future…We were not designing for a space that was just ‘everything is new, new, new.’.. We wanted something that would have personality and character and grit, because Covington is personality, character and grit,” he said.
He noted the scale of the building with its tall ceilings and expansive space. The graphics needed to be large, too, to have impact and presence. One wall at the end of a hallway on the first floor features a large image of The Spirit of Progress, holding her torch high. Bursting before her is a large bright yellow spark.
Leaning into the past and looking toward the future
Durham pulled on the history of the building and on the histories of some of the major donors who helped fund the space.
Donors who had been founders themselves sponsored some of the larger meeting rooms and classrooms. He said these different entities allowed his team to play up the unique stories of each. Using frames and other elements throughout the building to create continuity, they tied together the stories of the different room sponsors.
One example is the Riedlin Lagoon Park Media Room honoring the Riedlin and Schott families, founders of Covington’s Bavarian Brewery. Ried Schott, director of the family’s nonprofit foundation, sponsored the room. The family also operated a popular amusement park in the early 1900s, known to locals as the Ludlow Lagoon. The wall outside the room features ephemera and photos of the historic amusement park.
The Durham design staff worked with the architect to ensure a cohesive look with the new elements that were being added to the space as well as the historic features. Tying into the rich wood that would be used in the space, they installed a donor feature wall made of tone-on tone-wood and based on the SparkHaus logo.
A place where the magic happens
About the project, Roberto summed it up. SparkHaus is a physical space, a place where people come together and things happen. It’s all about the dynamism that can happen when ideas collide.
Since its opening less than a year ago, SparkHaus has built its brand and reputation, attracting a host of founders, innovators and resources. Projects and presentations hosted there also have brought in students, educators, business leaders and others from across the region. The vision behind the brand has taken shape.See the SparkHaus website for information on the space and on upcoming public events. For more on Northern Kentucky’s innovation hub Blue North, go to bluenorthky.com.
