Month: November 2016

Branding The Future

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We were approached by Adam / Founder and Director of the Future 17 Conference to develop a new brand identity and strategy for the up and coming tech conference for teens. Future was born out of frustration at the lack of tech events aimed at teenagers and was therefore created with the sole aim of inspiring the next generation of tech leaders.

After their first event, which hosted speakers from TIME’s list of most influential teens, they are now hosting Future17, a one-day tech conference and hackathon that aims to inspire Northern Ireland’s teenagers to get more involved in the tech industry. By using a unique model and organising a tech conference around a hackathon, they ensure that attendees get the most from this experience: not only will they be able to develop their skills first-hand by ‘hacking’ together a product, but they will also receive talks from some of the leading people in the technology industry today. The ultimate aim of the event is not only to inspire the next generation of tech leaders but also to make teens see code as more than lines and squiggles on a screen and appreciate it for the magic that it is. This founder has his sights set on a number of high-profile digital superstars to lead the conference to be held in the Titanic Building, Belfast.

We set the new Future 17 tone of voice around the primary mission of ‘developing greatness’ which symbolises the over arching theme of the event, inspiring the future of tech and digital/online developers. In keeping with the younger, teen target audience we aimed to create a brand identity that communicated effectively with this age group as well as potential sponsors. Adam, the founder has already secured solid investment from the likes of Twitter, Kainos and the MCS Group, all championing this growing industry in Northern Ireland. With this in mind, we created a clever brand mark utilising the ascender in the ‘F’ device with it’s own speech bubble mark. This subtle device speaks volumes across all marketing material on and offline. It immediately visualises the essence of the talks at the conference and is easily adapted across the brand.

As well as the primary ‘F’ mark we introduced an additional, more fluid ‘F’ device built from a data map concept. This secondary ‘F’ is used across the brand in more abstract, high impact fashion. The founder of Future 17 thought that this additional device spoke volumes across marketing material and liked how versatile it became when rolled out across the conference graphics on stage and delegate material. All in all, there are two key components to this brand, the contemporary primary brand mark using the speech bubble in the F Ascender and the ‘Data Map’ F which adapts the playful, secondary colour palette.

In keeping with the contemporary brand identity, we introduced Calibre as the brand typeface. The surge of circular typefaces in 2016 has been incredible and this one in particular fitted perfectly with the Future 17 ident, clean, concise, on trend. The supporting imagery with the Future 17 brand was chosen to inspire and intrigue, high impact scenic photography of skylines and the night sky symbolising the potential of the delegates and their future impact in tech.

We are extremely pleased with the final branding of the Future 17 conference and look forward to the roll out as the build up begins for 2017. Here’s to the future of tech in Northern Ireland. If you are interested in attending the Future 17 conference please follow the link below for tickets and any further information. http://www.future17.co/

WYOBTTWD…

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Here at Kaizen Brand Evolution we are big music and fashion fans, so are eager to participate in this year’s ‘Wear Your Old Band T-Shirt To Work Day’ by Radio 6 on the 25th November.

We have our tees picked out, pressed and ready. It’s sparked a debate on our favourite albums that go with them, here’s an insight into our eclectic studio taste.

Ryan: Album – ‘Down in Albion’ by Babyshambles

For Band t-shirt day I’ll be wearing my Babyshambles – Pete Doherty, Heart Tattoo – T-shirt from their Irish Tour in April 2006 / Spring & Airbrake / Belfast

I kept this t-shirt as a memento to this epic gig! I had a pint with the band before their set, lit one of Pete Doherty’s cigarettes for him while he was on stage and appeared the next day on page 3 of the Irish News (which I still have) with Pete Doherty and Kate Moss on a feature about the band playing in Belfast.

‘Down in Albion’ is no doubt my favourite Babyshambles album. When I hear ‘Killamangiro’ it brings me back to my old student flat behind Auntie Annie’s where my mate and I started the band ‘The Couth.’ I’m still a massive fan of Babyshambles and the Libertines!

Lynsay: Album – ‘Stone Roses’ by Stone Roses
Painted by band member John Squire, the style harking to Jackson Pollock and the May 1968 riots in Paris, the chaos in the picture is balanced with the subtle placement of pattern that can be found in Squires current artworks. It’s my favourite, so much so, that my birthday present to me was the jacket. The chaos symbolises their handling of later events in their career, decorating those who had wronged them, homes and offices in paint, as “that’s the way people deal with things in Manchester”.

One of the first things a Roses fan will ask you when you meet them is, “first, or second album?”, I’m in the first camp, with ‘I Wanna be Adored’ still giving shivers.

I’m choosing the Phoenix Park T-Shirt over the classic ‘Lemon’ due to typesetting, I love green, and my friends and I got pit tickets and we were so close we could have licked him!

Shaleen: Album – ‘The Script’ by The Script
I listen to quite a lot of different music so deciding on a T-Shirt for Band T-Shirt day was quite difficult. My favourite bands would be Maroon 5 and The Script, who have the advantage as I’ve been to see them live in concert. One of my favourite songs would ‘The Man Who Can’t Be Moved’ but I generally love most of their songs. But I also love older music bands like The Beatles and Queen.

Jordan: Album – ‘Gutter Phenomenon’ by Every Time I Die
I wish I was wearing an Every Time I Die T-shirt for band T-shirt day, because that would mean the one that was ripped off my back at one of their gigs would still be intact. I loved that shirt! My favourite album of theirs is ‘Gutter Phenomenon’, because it’s just so heavy, riffs for days.

Vicki: Album – ‘Ill Communication’ by Beastie Boys
I don’t listen to that much music these days unless you count movie soundtracks. I don’t have that many band t-shirts (always too pricey for me, who loves a freebie!) In saying that, I still have and love my Calling tee. I was obsessed with them as a teen; finding out Alex Band was related to Charles Band, director of the ‘Puppet Master’ horror movie franchise, only made it worse! For the big day though, I have acquired and repurposed a Beastie Boys Tee, which you can see how here  here. I wasn’t as big a fan when I was younger, but finding myself really enjoying their music as an adult.

Lizi: Album – ‘Spice’ by Spice Girls
I haven’t really been a music lover or a groupie and loved one particular band and any band that has been cool and hip. I have always just liked any music just by the song, so picking my favourite band for band t-shirt day has been hard. I just go with the flow when it comes to music!

When I was little I always wanted to be part of the Spice Girls (I know, cool right!) Sporty Spice was my favourite and I knew every song and dance move there was!

Design of the Boojum Food Truck

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This month in Kaizen Brand Evolution we had the pleasure of working on the concepts and design of Boojum’s brand new offering –The Boojum Food Truck. The Food truck is now available for bookings across the whole of Ireland for events, festivals, weddings and pretty much any party you can think of. The food truck craze has taken America by storm and the owners of Boojum felt that Ireland was the perfect place to launch their own!

We created the campaign, additional web pages and Food truck design itself for the launch and already it has had major bookings for festivals and events across the province. ‘You see me rollin’ is the lead campaign for the food truck encompassing the rolling of the burrito and the food truck rolling down the road. The vehicle design is big, bold and extremely eye catching. The branding was also ‘rolled’ out across video, print and digital campaigns. We are, as always very proud of the work done and wish the Boojum food truck all the success it deserves.

Collaborating & creating with Down Royal Racecourse

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The Down Royal Racecourse has long been a stage for some of the most exciting spectacles in Northern Ireland, and this is exactly what we try to capture when we produce work for them.

One of the most exciting projects we have worked on with the team at Down Royal is their upcoming Festival of Racing, taking place on the 5th and 6th of November. This project was a culmination of joint efforts between the teams at Titanic Belfast and Victoria Square in getting us the source material to work with and us here at Kaizen Brand Evolution in bringing everything together into an informative and communicative piece of design.

We created the look and feel for the campaign with two goals in mind, and that was to excite and intrigue. The collage of images comes together to tell a story of equal parts, seamlessly joining The Down Royal Racecourse with the two main sponsors of the event, Titanic Belfast and Victoria Square. The horses jumping from one building to another are the visual link between the two giants of Northern Irish culture, and create a perfect basis to build our campaign upon. Once we had the visual style established, we started work on producing everything that was required for the event, from an in-depth festival brochure design, online and social media adverts right the way through to large format print campaigns that can be seen around Belfast and further afield.

The brochure consists of a full race schedule with an in-depth look at all the scheduled races and their individual history, as well as information and history about the racecourse itself. Information about the suites available for rent was also included, which rounded off the brochure brilliantly as a showcase of everything that The Down Royal Racecourse has to offer to its patrons.

We wanted the brochure to be indicative of the level of service and excellence that has come to be expected at the Racecourse, and as such we started from the ground up, crafting the look and feel for the typography and imagery by building a structured grid system with classic measurements, which all the content adheres to throughout the publication. Once we had established an appropriate grid we started looking at the typography itself, and decided upon a brilliantly characterful typeface called ‘Agenda’. This typeface takes its roots in the classic lines of the London underground typeface ‘Johnston’, so when looking at an institution like The Down Royal Racecourse, we thought this direction was definitely appropriate in terms of bringing an established feel to the publication.

This styling was then brought right across to all other materials required publicity of the event as well as for use during the event. The latter consisted of race-cards for individual events taking place during the festival, such as the Victoria Square Best Dressed Ladies Day competition as well as the first Grade one chase of the season in the British Isles. The messaging and offering was subtly changed in each printed material to attract the appropriate audience before being designed for double page spread adverts for print in The Ulster Tatler Magazine as well as the Northern Woman Magazine. These offerings were then crafted for use online on social media, but also on the extended network of advertising slots as supplied by the great team at Mirror Media, all coming together as a complete blanket campaign which covered all facets of the Northern Irish consumer market.

All in all, this project brought together the best aspects of the design industry – collaboration, creativity and coverage – and as such was an excellently rewarding project to work on.

Staying Healthy by Working Together

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Slim’s Healthy Kitchen is one of the longest standing clients on the Kaizen Brand Evolution roster. Since their fruition, we have developed the brand, from the brand identity, tone of voice and brand personality to their website, social media design, menus and interiors. Our working relationship has strengthened as the business has continued to grow significantly, with the opening of 4 new restaurants in the Belfast area and now a new venture into all of the DW Fitness Clubs. Slim’s Healthy Kitchen continues to develop and evolve their brand with us and the understanding of the brand values is what makes our business, and theirs, truly successful. When we received news that Slim’s garnered a contract with DW Fitness Clubs to open the Express model across all stores in Ireland, United Kingdom and Scotland we were absolutely thrilled for their business.

The past two weeks has seen the launch of the Slim’s Healthy Kitchen brand in DW Fitness Clubs across Northern Ireland and with our help, we have delivered the Slim’s brand experience in this new venue. Brand consistency across the DW roll out was imperative and with the design of Digital menus for screens behind the counter, interior graphics for the restaurant, promotional material such as flyers, pop-up banners and social media posts we have set the standard for future Slim’s Health Kitchen Express roll-outs.

We worked closely with the marketing and management team at Slim’s Healthy Kitchen in the design of the new menu for DW Fitness Clubs. The brief was to attract and engage gym users, parents of children using gym facilities and appeal to personal trainers alike. We designed and developed a series of high impact graphic devices and colour schemes, bringing the screen menus to life. The brand personality is highlighted in the Slim’s Express model, use of contemporary graphic design utilising standout illustrations, high impact photography and personable brand language.

Along with the new menu design, we had to adapt the Slim’s Healthy Kitchen brand to suit the interiors of each DW Fitness Club. We created a series of branded vinyl signage, which can be seen throughout each location on counter fronts, window displays and feature walls. Vinyl signage is a great way of displaying brand identities, language and offers across the store especially on this project we were able to brand the already existing unit rather quickly. In addition to the vinyl signage we created and designed a series of internal posters for the restaurant. For the poster designs, we called upon local photographer Fergus Jordan (Whitecloud Photographic) who produced a beautiful series of stylised food photography showcasing the offering at DW Fitness Clubs. The imagery reflected the brand values for the Express Store fantastically using bright, eye-catching backdrops as well as some extremely creative food styling shots. The mix of high-end photography, graphic design, typographic design and illustration really sets Slim’s Healthy Kitchen apart from their competitors. The introduction of the branding into the DW Fitness Clubs has completely transformed the way healthy food and drink is now offered in this fast paced environment.

With the success of the first four Slim’s Express restaurants opening across DW Fitness Clubs Northern Ireland in Boucher Road Belfast, Bangor, Newtownabbey and Londonderry we are excited to evolve the brand even further as Gary McIldowney prepares to take over the DW Fitness Clubs restaurant offering across the United Kingdom and Scotland. Slim’s Healthy Kitchen is the perfect example of brand evolution, highlighting our own business model that together we are creative change makers, achieving big results from small changes over time well spent with clients. The Slim’s Healthy Kitchen brand has never been as strong as the business continues to grows, so do we.