Citybase Apartments
Branding
Project Synopsis
- Client Citybase
- Sector Leisure
- Discipline Branding
- Collateral Brand Identity
Brief
Citybase Apartments are one of the major players in the serviced
apartment industry, but their previous branding had become dated
over the 4 years of its existence, and required updating to reflect
new customers and markets. Wildfire were asked to rebrand the
company to bring its image in line with its reputation. The new
brand needed to work effectively across Citybase's leisure
(Citybase Apartments) and corporate (Citybase Business)
markets.
Research & Analysis
A large proportion of the branding process involved the
compilation of a positioning document, comprising research into
Citybase's values and strengths, as well as analysis of their
competitors. An integral and revealing part of this research
involved conducting brand workshops within Citybase to discover
staff's views on their company, and performing interviews with
clients to ascertain Citybase's key strengths and USPs. This
document enabled Wildfire to get to the heart of what made Citybase
tick, and to fully understand what they were trying to achieve
through rebranding.
Creative
Armed with our positioning document, we set out to create a
brand identity that avoided the clichéd forms of keys and doorways
that are prominent in most property companies' identities. Instead,
we created a flexible identity that used an abstract pinstripe
ligature - representing business, roads, buildings etc. depending
on the viewer's imagination and the specific application. Likewise,
the customised typography used in the identity gave a nod to travel
with its smooth curves and sweeping serifs.
Equally important as the identity itself was the consideration
of other brand elements, such as image style, colour palette,
typography and tone of voice. In order to create a reference point
for ourselves and Citybase we produced comprehensive guidelines
outlining all aspects of the brand and how it should be applied
across Citybase's marketing material.