How To Brand A City Park
Browsing through the book Going Public: Public Architecture, Urbanism and Interventions, I found a project that deserves an article. A few years ago, design agency Byggstudio was asked to create a new visual style for Folkets Park in Malmö, Sweden. The designers came up with an entirely new and remarkable graphic identity for the city park.
The fact that parks can have their own graphic identity is a pretty interesting thought in itself, but the way they did it is simply amazing. Using fresh colors and slick fonts, Byggstudio came up with a graphic identity that comes to the front in elements like new logotypes, color palettes, booklets and a website. But that’s not the only thing — the park’s new visual identity also comes back in the park itself.
Byggstudio is a Swedish-Norwegian creative consultancy that was founded in 2006 by Hanna Nilsson and Sofia Østerhus. The agency develops design concepts for print, exhibitions, events, interiors and environments. In the case of Folkets Park the designers wanted the visual concept to be flexible and free, “as the park itself should be”:
“The concept is quite free (…) and is based on a set of elements such as light bulb frames, pennants, gates and fences that can be applied to various graphic material. A customized alphabet, Kioskis, was created based on the characteristics of the park.”
One of the most striking physical elements Nilsson and Østerhus designed for “Malmö’s Central Park” is the playful entrance notice board that welcomes visitors to the area. The signs and lettering of the board, that holds information about the park as well as more personal messages, are made flexible and can be moved and exchanged according to the time of the year and the events that are happening.
The designers also took care of the signs and flexible magnetic letters for the kiosks in Folkets Park. The magnetic letters have customized letter shapes to illustrate the fun environment of the park. Furthermore, Byggstudio designed brightly colored tapestry to transform the sad-looking stage fences of Folkets Park into a playful collage pattern of traditional fence types.
