M&C Saatchi creates Festival Wing identity

M&C Saatchi has created the identity for the Southbank’s Festival Wing, a £100m refurbishment and redesign project.

The Festival Wing identity
The Festival Wing identity

The project, which is being led by architect Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, will give rise to new arts spaces including a Glass Pavilion and the refurbishment of The Hayward Gallery

The newly configured site will be known as The Festival Wing, and carries a logo created by M&C Saatchi on a pro-bono basis according to the Southbank Centre.

Operation design manager at The Southbank Centre Paul Denton says that the identity ‘contains deconstructed elements of the 1951 Festival of Great Britain.’

The three arrows of the logo, set in colours inspired by the festival, represent the coming together of The Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Purcell Room and the Hayward Gallery complex, which will all be united under The Festival Wing.

A public consultation exhibition situated within Royal Festival Hall has been designed by Kent Lyons.

Kent Lyons has also created this website, that together with the exhibition carries a ‘peg board, under construction’ look, which consultancy partner Noel Lyons says ‘is a fitting way of telling that it’s a public consultation process, encouraging people to get involved.’

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  • Michael Smith November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    I’m not in a position to comment on the quality of the design (no one is unless they know and understand the brief and the journey the designers went on).

    But, once again, I find myself furious with big name agencies doing pro-bono work for cultural sector projects.

    If you want to support the arts, give money to the arts, don’t undermine the design industry by devaluing the service we provide.

    It’s a £100M project. I’m sure the architects, planners, solicitors, accountants, project managers, builders, electricians, engineers etc all charged properly for their time and expertise.

    If we keep telling people that our creativity is free then they will believe that it’s worthless.

    Michael Smith, Director, Cog Design

  • Mahbir Thukral November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    Greetings!

    First of all, I would just like to highlight that I am in no way connected in any way with Cog Design. But I would like to express my agreement with Michael on this subject of how we, the visual communications industries are undermining ourselves through the forwardness of pro-bono work, when its highly probable that the architect didn’t waver his cost out of goodwill.

    As a British creative now based in Amsterdam, my agency works with local start-ups concentrated in the food and FMCG sectors. While the majority of our work is paid for at the reputable rates. For some clients who still have the ambition to go further, but may be unable to do so due to unavailable start-up funds to initiate the necessary creative communications work; we have devised business models that allow us to create market grade branding and communications work for these clients but without having to do it pro-bono, and thus as a result, not undermining the quality of our work.

    As an example, for one notable client, we have implemented a commission-based business structure; meaning we undertook the work at the proper rate and then recouped our costs through a certain amount of commission from their product sales based on the growth projections presented. While it may take longer to recoup costs and I am fully aware that not all agencies are in the healthy financial position to consider such methods, we believe that this approach is a stimulus for the sectors that we are doing business with as well as the quality of our very own.

    I am very much for when our own industry can come up with means to support our industry’s development for the long haul, but doing pro-bono work, especially for large organisations such as these is definitely not the correct method for achieving this. I can recall when I was doing my BTEC ND and Cog Design initiated the Recognition Day competition. Doing such initiatives within education sector can still draw a similar amount of publicity as I presume M&C Saatchi were hoping to draw through doing this project. But in addition, community initiatives such as working with colleges and universities will provide a much needed confidence boost and long-term strategic investment for the future and quality of our industry; whereas by doing pro-bono branding work for big cultural buildings in London will most definitely not achieve anything close to this!

  • Maciek Rek November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    I find it very encouraging that even a huge agency like M&C Saatchi fights for prestigious projects just for the portfolio, publicity and for the sake of working on great project.

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