MacDonagh Junction’s branding designed by Us

US Designers is to create branding and marketing literature for MacDonagh Junction, a 27 900m2 mixed-use development in Kilkenny, Ireland.

The scheme, which will be retail-led, will encompass leisure facilities, a business quarter and a residential element. Developer Chesterbridge Developments is also searching for a hotel tenant.

Planning permission for the scheme is expected by the end of the year, with work beginning on site in January 2004 and completion due for 2005.

The group, which is responsible for name-generation, marketing literature and promotional activity in addition to branding, is working closely with the architects on the scheme, parent company Broadway Malyan. It hopes to be appointed to the implementation component of the project, including interiors and signage.

The first evidence of the group’s work will be a marketing pack aimed at attracting anchor tenants. The linen box set inclu

des a brochure and an audio visual presentation. Work is now beginning on further marketing material, including advertising, hoardings and direct mail aimed at both prospective tenants and local people and businesses.

According to Us Designers graphics director Chris Church, who is creative lead on the project, the identity’s four quarters aim to reflect the historical nature of Kilkenny and the developer’s ambition to create an ‘urban quarter’ in the city.

‘Kilkenny has a long history and we needed to reflect that without it becoming a pastiche of “olde worlde”. We also didn’t want to create an overly retail identity,’ he explains.

The marque is dissected by converging lines suggestive of the River Nore, adds Church, and the arrow symbolises the geographic location of the development in relation to the city.

The group has introduced a dusky moss and slate tones to make up the colour palette, ‘reflecting local materials which we would like to incorporate within the scheme’, he says.