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Transform magazine •

Cause correction: How charities rebrand to empower and inspire

Once a barren desert for all things ‘brand’ related, the third sector has blossomed to life in recent years, and perhaps this is nowhere truer than in the UK. This may seem totally paradoxical given the nation is facing the brunt of a cost-of-living crisis. If inflation outstrips pay increases, we should expect to see donations to causes drop off. But the UK has seen the inverse happen, with a record £13.9bn donated by the general public to charities in 2023 (a 9% increase from the year prior),...
Transform magazine •

Sensing change: How and why brand design is set to become multisensorial

At a distance, the John Lewis & Partners in Horsham, southern England might be indistinguishable from any of its other 33 department stores up and down the UK. But get a little closer and you’ll find an enticing, sleek space that was recently the subject of a multi-million-pound makeover. The ambitious move might well reflect the beginnings of a revolutionary shift in how the iconic brand wants to interact with its audience.  
Upon entering the store, you are greeted by a deluge of activity that...
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The house always wins: the rise of internalised creative

The late 2000s provided the perfect storm necessary to disrupt the relationship between brands and the people who meet their creative needs. First, the 2007-2008 financial crisis shocked global corporations and had a huge impact on their psyche regarding costs. Combine this with a second world-changing phenomenon – the advent of the iPhone, ushering in the age of social media – and multinationals were capable of connecting with consumers everywhere at every moment. They began to question where t...
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Top of the pop-ups: How captivating brand experiences are designed in retail

But there are maintenance challenges to consider with the kind of pop-ups that require the brand’s more experienced staff on-site for long periods, like Beauty Pie’s. “Often for beauty, there's a lot of product knowledge and experience required on-site,” Barnes explains. “If you're working across 15 to 20 products in a pop-up, it's quite hard to impart that kind of information and passion into a promotional member of staff and taking experts out of the business for a long period of time is quite...
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Reenergising Bahrain: the rebranding of Bapco Energies

Nestled between the powers of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the Kingdom of Bahrain has a long and colourful history on the Arabian Peninsula. Once known as the global centre for the natural pearl industry, it faced a crisis in the 1920s when that market collapsed. Fortunately, this downturn coincided with the discovery of Bahraini oil in 1932 and natural gas the following decade, and has ever since provided wealth, stability and identity to the smallest Gulf state. Come the 21st century, its Formula O...
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Nature, beauty and history for everyone: The story of the National Trust brand

While sleepy and somewhat unassuming, the countryside village of Alfriston in East Sussex is of great importance to England’s heritage. Hidden away by the Wealden South Downs, the tiny settlement – replete with pretty cottages, idyllic tearooms and crooked inns – also hosts the thatched medieval Clergy House. A stone’s throw from the grand St Andrew’s Church which the property served for some 300 years, it might just contain the key to understanding the origins of the National Trust’s modern-day...
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Healthy competition: The rebranding of PetLab Co.

It is often believed brands will struggle should they fail to convey their functional offering. Accordingly, a study by the Association of National Advertisers in 2010 demonstrated that around two-thirds of brands prioritised expressing the ‘rational’ benefit over that of emotion. While a Harvard Business Review study in 2015 has since proven the payoff of connecting with audiences on an emotional level, there still remains scepticism in practice, especially at a time when money and trust are sc...
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From humble beginnings

Free The Birds’ strategy revolved around maintaining design cues that were working and giving attention to those that were failing. For instance, the design agency deemed the little curves in its relatively new logotype to be “beautiful” and “welcoming”, such that it didn’t require great revision. But by partnering with typeface design studio Dalton Maag, Free The Birds ensured the Avon typeface was slightly refined while also maintaining brand recognition.
But the project moved beyond polishing...
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The royal treatment

There’s no hiding Dubai’s devotion to maintaining its meticulous self-image. From as far south as the man-made Palm Jebel Ali archipelago, past the lofty Burj Al Arab, all the way up to the imperious Burj Khalifa in the Downtown district and beyond, a single word unites this whirlwind of steel, glass and sand: iconic.
Everything built must be world class, and invariably everything built is. The Palm Jumeirah, chief among Dubai’s most prestigious destinations, is one such example. The first of th...
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Electric ensemble

For a long time, the assumption has been that best practice in extensive branding projects involves a more linear approach, with each interest group working on the project keeping at an arm’s length from one another. The design agency will research and strategise before constructing a visual identity, which will then inform the work of other specialist companies that the particular project demands, such as sonic or digital. The client, meanwhile, will watch on from the sideline after providing t...
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Location, location, location: How brands conquered the world

Johnson and her colleagues, following further research, came to understand the unique appreciation UK consumers have for brands which can tell a story, as well as brands which make consumers feel like they’re doing some good when buying those products. Fortunately enough, Nature’s Heart had an excellent but untapped backstory for 1HQ to delve into. The family run business is deeply concerned with the welfare of the local growers who farm its goldenberries, and even set up The Goldenberry Plan as...
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Distilling the American spirit

There were, however, big issues. While tour guides would present Jim Beam as the biggest bourbon brand in the world, what visitors were actually faced with was more befitting of a mini distillery. Additionally, the whiskey produced in the vats seen on the tour would never be sold as Jim Beam products, leading to an inauthentic feel or ‘Disneyfication’, as Myers describes it.
Beating two American agencies to win the project, Love went about harmonising the site and scaling up the experience. Nowh...
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Logo design’s sea change

It was clear that data would have to be retrieved from the ocean to tell this story. So, the agency suggested a buoy be put out at sea which could retrieve data on how the ocean is moving at any given moment. Bassiri created the basis of a logo: the brand’s name across three lines with horizontal lines to reference the marinière (the white and blue striped shirts worn by seamen in the French Navy). However, it would be the data extracted from the ocean that would truly bring it to life. The line...
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Playing politics: The ascent of America’s noisy new lifestyle brands

Black Rifle is a lifestyle brand in the truest sense. The ‘Starbucks of the right’, as some call it, commands a remarkable brand loyalty which is achieved by maintaining its militaristic, high-energy image. And it far exceeds merely donning gunships, bald eagles and US flag iconography on its products and merchandise. Black Rifle’s YouTube channel, replete with guns, steely-looking bearded men and skits mocking liberals, gives its audience a whole new dimension to interact with the brand. Its vi...
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What’s on the menu?

Groups of couples, friends and families embroiled in booming conversations are sporadically tended to by waiters, frantically crisscrossing each other from counter to table with enormous bowlfuls of hearty pasta. It’s a Monday night at fast casual food chain Vapiano in central London and the atmosphere is raucous. 
There are as many as four Vapianos to choose from throughout the city, but with this particular restaurant being the first to reach the UK’s shores in 2008, and it being generally rec...
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How to brand a football stadium

There are few sights in the world that can evoke a sensation of awe quite like that of visiting a football stadium for the first time. The myriad of online videos, where beaming children are led by their parents as they walk out of concrete concourses and the enormity of a stadium bowl reveals itself, tells us this is a global phenomenon, and that the feeling is almost entirely divorced from both borders and culture.
Consider the imperiousness of Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu Stadium with its seemi...