KISS Branding, an independent brand consultancy and studio based in The Calls in Leeds, has created the brand identity for Aire Park, the 24-acre development from “purpose-led, quality-driven real estate investor” Vastint that will be home to Leeds’ largest new city-centre green space.
Built on the former Tetley Brewery site – originally founded in 1822 and producer of the world’s biggest selling cask beer for much of the 1980s – the site is now home to one of Europe’s largest regeneration programmes and will eventually feature about 1,350 new homes and 800,000 sq ft of office space, plus retail and 700 new trees, centred on the eight-acre park.
READ MORE: Cancel your Saturday nights – the X Factor is coming back to ITV
KISS describes the branding as: “Civic infrastructure led by the brand soul: Stronger by Nature. It reads two ways, every part of the district and every person in it is made stronger by the park, and it speaks to the character of Leeds itself, of people who are stronger by their own nature.”
The agency reframed the scheme from a large developer project in South Leeds into a piece of the city under long-term stewardship, with a park open to everyone rather than just to paying tenants.
The site will hopefully host a huge range of activity across many decades: Events, occasions, seasons, audiences, use cases, and KISS noted that the identity needed one constant among all that change.
So, the foundational asset is the Aire Park monogram: the AP mark. It was drawn to be simple and iconic enough to be recognisable across generations and to survive being used and reused. Its wide, strong stance of the A carries the “stronger” half of the idea; the bowl of the P is “where nature blooms,” carrying the other half in what the creators describe as “a direct visual translation of the strategy line.”
Tetley’s Leeds side was closed in 2011 after the brand was acquired by Carlsberg, with brewing moved to the global megabrewer’s other facilities, however the developers are keeping the memory alive with The Tetley, a pub and coffee shop in the park located at the brewer’s refurbished former head office.
