Collective Branding & Identity
Idea: Collective Town Centre Branding & Marketing Strategy
Develop a strong narrative around the strengths and uniqueness of Chipping Barnet – its history, setting, and active local community.
Why it is useful:
- Collective across the Town Centre, incorporating town-wide campaigns, such as website, adverts, signage etc., to individual businesses and groups such as shop signage / graphics, events branding etc.
- Adaptable to many different uses, for example: website and social media; posters and print materials; templates for local businesses, institutions and events; and incorporated in wayfinding & public realm
Who needs to be involved:
- Town Team: Adopters/Champion
- Council: Lead/Funder
- Local Business: Adopters – use branding materials
- Cultural institutions: Adopters – use branding materials
- Brand / Graphic Designers (opportunity to link to a college a course and youth work experience, e.g. Livity)
How to get started:
- Develop brief and procure designers
- Engage with local businesses, cultural institutions, local groups to test ideas
- Develop launch materials (digital and physical)
- Brand pack/ templates for businesses, organisations or groups within the Town Centre
- Incorporate into all town centre marketing and branding
- Incorporate in the physical interventions, e.g. signage, wayfinding, public realm
Viability considerations:
- Funding opportunities: Council
- Resources: Content production
Example: ‘A Shrewsbury One-off since…’
Shropshire Council commissioned Identity Designed and We All Need Words to create a brand identity that sums up what makes the town special and why people should visit it. The answer was ‘The Original One-Off’: a brand that showcases all the town’s one-offs, big (Darwin was born there) and small (you can get a great loaf of bread near the station). The brand identity has also to be used on the town centre’s website.
For the visual identity they created a ‘one-off since…’ stamp that local businesses could use to promote what they do. The line can be used to show how old something is: since 1586. To show that something is new: since 2019. Or to say that a cake was baked earlier this morning: since 6.30am. The black-and-white pattern, inspired by the town’s Tudor buildings, helps Shrewsbury stand out from the bright and breezy identities other towns and places use.
