How do you brand a 370-acre transformation that won't be complete for three decades? The former Downsview Airport lands—fenced-off runways and industrial hangars at the edge of established Toronto neighborhoods—represented one of the most ambitious city-building projects in North America. The project needed to feel monumental enough to inspire confidence in a multi-generational vision, yet intimate enough to feel genuinely connected to the communities it would serve.

Northcrest Developments, who is leading the transformation of the 370-acre site, approached Pentagram, who had initially worked with Northcrest on id8 Downsview, a multi-year public consultation process. The conversations had surfaced competing needs: Residents wanted bold vision and neighborhood warmth. Future tenants wanted an iconic destination and local authenticity. Capital partners wanted confidence in the ambition.

The challenge was finding a strategic frame that could hold all of these tensions without settling for compromise. The positioning that emerged—Humanizing a Place of Monumental Ambitions—became that frame. This multi-decade $30 billion transformation will create seven distinct neighbourhoods —combining residential, commercial, cultural, and innovation space—for 60,000 residents. YZD needed to acknowledge that extraordinary scale while centering the everyday experiences of people living, working, and gathering there. The identity would need to feel simultaneously vast and approachable, iconic and inviting, transformative and rooted. With this level of complexity unfolding over decades, the nomenclature for districts, partnerships, and programming needed to establish a unifying thread while allowing for individual character.

That positioning directly informed the decision to adopt a branded house architecture and nomenclature strategy. The YZD name itself—the former airport’s call sign—carries inherent equity and recognition. Rather than dilute that with competing district identities, the system leverages YZD as a unifying thread. Individual districts like the Hangar District can assert their own character while remaining clearly part of the larger whole. The flexibility built into the system allows YZD to dial up or down depending on context, but the master brand always anchors the experience. For a development unfolding over 30 years, that consistency builds cumulative awareness rather than starting from zero with each new phase.

The site's aviation heritage provided the conceptual territory. Airport codes, runway markings, industrial stenciling—these visual systems are fundamentally about clarity. They're designed to be read from hundreds of meters away, yet remain precise up close. That dual-scale legibility became the design thesis.

The logotype for YZD draws its structure directly from runway geometry. The 54-degree angle visible in the letter Z comes from the actual runway that bisects the site. That angle became a foundational device, threading through layout, motion, iconography, and environmental graphics. It carries forward the discipline and precision of aviation infrastructure while marking a shift from closed industrial zone to open urban district. The display typeface is Cera Stencil, referencing airport signage while reading cleanly across radically different contexts—from monumental site signage to wayfinding systems to digital platforms to tenant applications.

The photography spotlights the communities who will actually inhabit this place. The art direction focuses on micro-to-macro views of everyday life: people engaging authentically with space, natural light, strong colour, genuine moments. The visual language balances land and sky, the built environment and human experience.

The system was designed to work at extremes: enormous environmental graphics visible from highways, intimate tenant signage, construction hoardings, development proposals, digital platforms, social media. Addressing these dimensional extremes from the outset ensured resilience. As YZD grows and welcomes new communities, the identity maintains consistency without rigidity.

Pentagram developed a comprehensive mapping framework for this stage of the site development, starting with the Hangar District, YZD’s first neighbourhood. The maps move from highly abstract to literal representations, establishing clear parameters for how infrastructure, buildings, transit, and green space are visualized. A component-based vector library ensures consistency as the site evolves, scaling from neighborhood-level detail to regional transit connections.

The brand gives Northcrest the tools to communicate with clarity across dozens of stakeholders operating at different scales and timelines. It establishes YZD not as a real estate development but as a destination defined by its aviation past and urban future—a place building toward innovation, community, and resilience over generations.

Thank you to the Northcrest team for their collaboration in developing this work.