Chipping Barnet Community Plan

Emerging Project

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.