Coca-Cola launches Christmas campaign identity

“Coca-Cola and Christmas are synonymous,” says Kristie Malivindi, creative director at JKR. It’s true that the brand has carved out its own strangely prominent spot in the festive calendar, largely thanks to the Coca-Cola lorry announcing the arrival of the holidays via the nation’s TV screens each year. “Coke holiday campaigns are a seasonal tradition.”

This year, Coca-Cola is consolidating its Christmas links by debuting a visual identity created by JKR and the brand’s in-house design team specifically for its holiday campaign work. The identity was designed to be “iconically Coke” and “iconically Christmas”, according to Malivindi, while being flexible enough to work globally across all of its touchpoints – from digital platforms to packaging to communications.

“We created a suite of ornaments in a tight palette of colours, shapes, patterns, (and from different perspectives), to balance recognition of the brand with flexibility of application,” she says.

The holiday campaign identity also includes a new serif typeface that brings “warmth and sparkle”, Malivindi says. Designed by Brody Associates, the typeface is based on specimens from the Coca-Cola archives, which lends it a kind of vintage charm.

The team also channelled their efforts into creating a motion design toolkit that would help the festive campaigns to thrive on digital, which was “a bit of a first for Coke”, Malivindi says.

Oxford’s Christ Church college unveils new branding

SomeOne has updated the design identity for the historic college, which includes a reworked crest lifted from the 1960s

Oxford University college Christ Church has revealed new branding developed by London-based design agency SomeOne. Compared to the college’s founding year of 1546, the inspiration for the heraldic crest stems from a far more recent chapter in history.

While researching in the college’s archives, the team came across Betty Stuart Miller’s 1968 version of the college’s historical emblem in a book. The crest she illustrated has now been “painstakingly redrawn and digitised” to be fit for use 55 years later.

The crest itself has far more component parts than we’re used to seeing these days, including symbols of a hat, tassels, and a shield that itself contains multiple motifs.

SomeOne was acutely aware of the “complexity” of the design, which is why the team decided to create nine versions of it. The design comes in three colourways and each of those in three size variants, with more or less intricate detail depending on the scale.

Center Parcs Europe’s rebrand goes back to nature

The green bird and blue type that were the focal point of the holiday brand’s previous identity have been replaced with a softer colour palette and a tree-shaped symbol that DesignStudio says harks back to the company’s mission of reconnecting guests with nature.

Center Parcs Europe – which doesn’t include Center Parcs UK – has 29 holiday destinations across mainland Europe, including Parcs in the Netherlands, France, Germany and Belgium. They offer cottages to stay in as well as a range of  family-focused activities all on site. DesignStudio’s new identity will be rolled out across all of these, with different ‘totems’ used to show the various options at each – for example, a wave for swimming pools, or a pair of palm leaves for the Market Dome, where guests can shop and buy food.

DesignStudio has introduced new typeface Bagoss – made by Displaay Type Foundry – which was chosen for its circular joints and organic terminals, and certainly adds more of a welcoming feel to the branding. Although the focus is on nature, the colour system embraces a nuanced palette, ranging from leafy green and a caramel brown, through to a more vibrant pink and deep blue.

Illustrations by Fuchsia MacAree and photography also helps emphasise this connection with the great outdoors, with shots of tall forests, golden sunsets and misty hills suggesting an enticing experience.

Raise your arches

Credits:
Agency: Leo Burnett
CCO: Chaka Sobhani
ECD: Mark Elwood
Creative Directors: James Millers, Andrew Long
Senior Creative: Gareth Butters
Art Director: Joe Miller
Creative Director of Design: David Allen
Designer: Jakk Breedon
Production Company: Moxie Pictures
Director: Edgar Wright

Thix hair loss brand

Hair loss is big business these days. Given that around 80% of men and 50% of women will experience it in their lives, it’s hardly surprising that the market for products and supplements is booming – to the tune of an estimated $23.6 million globally.

The brand’s visual identity is rooted in the fact that it is “backed by science, not magic”, according to Otherway, the studio behind the new branding. The process began with choosing the brand name itself, which is a combination of the words ‘thick’ and ‘fix’.

Thix’s all-caps wordmark is designed to be unapologetically simple, creating a trusted stamp of authority across what can be a confusing industry for the consumer to navigate.

The rest of the identity is inspired by retro health and beauty packaging from the 70s and 80s, featuring two bold typefaces and a single colour palette of fresh green, referencing the product range’s mint and eucalyptus scent.

Hong Kong food destination Basehall

Since opening in 2020, Basehall has become a hotspot for hungry Hong Kong residents and visitors. So much so that parent company, HongKongLand Properties, recently unveiled a second, larger site in the same building which brings together 13 independent food and drink concepts.

To coincide with its opening, London-based studio Otherway was tasked with rethinking what an East Asian food hall could look like and positioning Basehall as a cultural destination.

The new branding is inspired by Hong Kong’s visual history, featuring a dynamic logo that nods to the city’s ubiquitous street signs and is described by Otherway’s founder.

The design language is built on a grid system which visualises the various layers coming together to create a tapestry, with each restaurant given a unique identity that pays homage to a signature dish or the owners themselves.

Otherway commissioned five illustrators to bring all the individual identities to life. “We wanted to create an area where every vendor had an equal chance of standing out compared to more established food brands. From 60-year-old roast goose shops, to brand new Michelin starred experiences,” says the studio.

otherway.com

New look for Wok to Walk

Wok to Walk began life in 2004 as a tiny restaurant in Amsterdam, inspired by the founders’ travels around Asia. Fast forward to today, and it’s a global food brand with over 100 sites in 20 countries.

Inspired by this ancient form of cooking, the new logo features a wok with a lightning bolt in the middle, which doubles as a signature W. Building on the dynamic mark, Without created a suite of patterns that sit across uniforms, takeaway bags and typographic posters.

A refreshed colour palette introduces new gradients inspired by the cinematography of Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai. Meanwhile, a new photography style and art direction seek to translate the colours, flavours and emotion of Chinese street food, instead of falling back on tired clichés.

The brand’s renewed emphasis on copywriting also focuses on food quality, seasonal recipes and ingredients, rather than price or meal deals. In this vein, the chefs – who attend circus school as part of their training – have been renamed as Woksmiths to highlight their cooking credentials.

Sainsbury’s festive fairytale ad

Credits:
Agency: Wieden + Kennedy London
Creative Directors: Freddy Taylor & Philippa Beaumont, Juan Sevilla & Joe de Souza
Executive Creative Director: Susan Hoffman
Agency Artworker: David Brodie
Design Directors: Phil Rosier, Alex Thursby-Pelham
Designer: Emma Cope
Production Company: Anonymous Content
Director: Tim Godsall
Editorial Company: Final Cut
VFX Company: Time Based Arts

Monzo reveals cheery brand refresh

Launched in 2015, Monzo is heralded for breaking the curse of dry, corporate brands in the personal banking sector. Its uplifting colours, down-to-earth voice and intuitive experience marked a clean break with the traditional banks, winning over a generation of millennials and beyond.

The new identity centres on the coral hue that made Monzo stand out in the first place, supported by ‘deep navy’ and ‘soft white’, and a wider secondary palette. Colours have been dialled up in the M logomark, which will be rolled out in touchpoints such as the app icon, though the shape of the logomark remains unchanged.

In terms of typography, the friendly, rounded Oldschool Grotesk was chosen as the display typeface, while a custom version of Universal Sans – Monzo Sans – will be used as the primary typeface for functional purposes.

A “warmer” approach has similarly been taken to the art direction and brand photography, as well as a suite of illustrations created by Ola Dobrzyńska.

Least favourite fish gets a rebrand

Ever heard of Patagonian toothfish? Slimehead? Peekytoe crab? All of these none-too-delicious-sounding fish have been the subjects of successful rebranding campaigns, becoming Chilean sea bass, Orange roughy, and mud crab, in a bid to get people eating them.

Chicago-based practice Span Studio is hoping it can work some similar magic on Asian Carp – an invented, catch-all name for various types of carp which escaped from fish farm retention ponds in the 1970s, and have since taken over the Illinois River. The fish have impacted biodiversity and ecosystems, and there are fears they will go on to damage America’s Great Lakes.

The logo appears on a set of concept packaging designs, which envision how Copi might be sold – all emphasising the locally caught aspect. The ‘Eat well, do good’ tagline is the final element, with the rebrand designed to get people buying the fish at the supermarket, or ordering it from restaurant menus.