DESIGNXPORT: BRANDING & ARCHITECTURE IDEA CONTEST
In the Summer of 2010, PIECE OF CAKE teamed up with Hamburg based SPINE Architects to participate in a tender for the branding and design of the designxport, Hamburg’s new design centre, which is to become a focal point within the city’s future town centre, the so-called HafenCity.
The challenge was to give the designxport – tomorrow’s home of Hamburg’s design industry - a unique identity while at the the same time delivering an exceptional trademark from which a branding concept could be derived.
Unfortunately, the designxport won’t move into a building of its own, but instead will be integrated into a “creative complex” called designport. Main parts of the institution’s future headquarters were already predetermined when the branding and design tender was issued. So, an extra dimension was added to the challenge, namely to make the designxport visible and relevant in the first place.
What looked like an ungrateful situation turned out to be our creative springboard. We simply asked ourselves which individual trait the designxport boasted that made it different than the designport complex it would be integrated in.
The difference between the designport and the designxport? Quite simple. One single letter: X. This we regarded as our potential branding and trademark conception. Our architecture partners then also found a way of integrating the X into the buildings construction plan.
To make the X-concept truly outstanding, it had to stand out of the building. Seeing design always surpasses existing barriers and frontiers, we wanted our trademark to stand out of the building and exceed its architectural borders. Obviously, the branding concept would then expand into public space thus creating communication satellites.
For us a creative team, the X is a placeholder. A placeholder for the designers who are going to create and exhibit at the designxport, for the people who are going to visit and for things to come that will happen at the designxport.
