Millennium Centre gets Sweet new look

The Wales Millennium Centre – the home of the Welsh National Opera – is to launch a new identity this week, designed by Sweet.

The small Cardiff-based group beat 49 other shortlisted consultancies to win the public tender for the WMC project in January. The centre is planning to launch a further tender to redesign its website, probably next year.

The WMC logo replaces one that was intended for use during the centre’s construction, but was retained long after the building’s completion in 2004.

Made up of a circle of 105 different geometric shapes, the redrawn logo is intended to represent the diversity of arts organisations resident in the WMC.

‘We took the idea of light in performance and just had fun with it,’ says Sweet creative director Jonathan Morris. ‘There are no fixed corporate colours, so the important thing is that the light and shade contrast.’

The print and on-line versions differ. ‘The print works in a simpler fashion with flat colours,’ Morris explains, ‘while the digital logo uses a myriad of different colours for each shape within the marque.’

Sweet is based 400m from the WMC, but the centre is eager to communicate that it chose the consultancy for its creativity and sympathy with the organisation.

‘We are more complex than people think, being home to seven national arts organisations, so the winning bidder needed to take a lateral approach to branding us,’ explains WMC head of marketing Penn Trevella. ‘It was important that the design group understood the direction that Wales is taking on the national stage, but it was not a prerequisite that it was Welsh.’

Sweet reveals that it is in negotiations with WMC to work on ‘other possible projects’.