You may be wondering what sonder means — a good question, considering it’s kind of a made-up word. According to The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, it means:

“You are the main character. The protagonist. The star at the center of your own unfolding story. You’re surrounded by your supporting cast: friends and family hanging in your immediate orbit. Scattered a little further out, a network of acquaintances who drift in and out of contact over the years.

But there in the background, faint and out of focus, are the extras. The random passersby. Each living a life as vivid and complex as your own. They carry on invisibly around you, bearing the accumulated weight of their own ambitions, friends, routines, mistakes, worries, triumphs, and inherited craziness.”

While it can be understood as a kind of sorrow, we think of sonder instead as a grounding belief, a whisper of possibility, and a magical approach to our work in the civic sphere.

A grounding belief:
We believe sonder speaks to a universal truth — that every person experiences life as a dynamic, complicated individual, and that this is true of everyone else around us, too.

A whisper of possibility:
First, sonder. Next, empathy. And with empathy, beautiful things can happen.

A magical approach:
Our work is rooted in the idea that civic spaces are not currently designed to foster human connection, and that public dialogue often lacks the nuance and patience needed to make sense of how the built environment shapes our lives. By centering sonder, we aim to help communities tap into a deeper sense of neighborly agency and collective possibility.

We are grateful to our creative designer, Beryl Kwok, who translated this concept into a beautiful, meaningful logo. The two parts of the “S” resemble an aerial view of two people walking down the street — almost, but not quite, connecting — as they move through their own stories.