Find Yourself in Canada Water Dockside

While London’s appeal is undeniable — living and working in the planets most compelling city offers a wide variety of experiences. From the smaller spaces and challenging traffic of central London, to the vast architectural scale of Canary Wharf — each district does offers pros and cons.

Unusually, Canada Water Dockside’s location nestles rather brilliantly between the two.

Dockside is a doddle to get to… a 10 minute hop to the City of London (Bank) or to Canary Wharf. So it makes enormous sense to look to make the destination ready to welcome the next generation of Londoners, keen to live, work, play and visit.

We worked with the ArtInvest team to arrive at a new strategy — pushing all those involved to look beyond the day-to-day and towards a larger goal.

Research revealed that, due to the waterside location — and the extensive green spaces surrounding Dockside, the air quality is some of the best found in central London. The feeling of calm that comes from being by the River Thames, the open spaces and lack of traffic all contribute to creating a terrific place to find ways of making the most of your time — be it working, socialising or residing there.

It was this elevated calm that led to us developing the position that this was not only London’s newest district, but that it was being designed specifically for people to flourish in — where they could have the space to find and realise their full potential.

This idea has been expressed in the line, ‘Find yourself at CanadaWater Dockside.’

Imagine a place where you can…

Find beauty.    Find teamwork.    Find peace.    Find the future.    Find flavour

After all, the greatest experiences in life are the ones where we find ourselves.

Everything that Canada Water Dockside has to offer has the potential to enable residents, visitors and commuters to ‘flourish’. It was this insight that informed Dockside’s identity. 

The expansive 5.2 acre green site, the dock itself and the pairing of the 3 terraced buildings, have been designed to revolutionise working by bringing the outside in. These facts planted the seed for the Dockside identity to act differently to other place branding, to create a breath of fresh air into the sector…

We created a visual botanical playground for Dockside, that constantly adapts and showcases the very best of what the area has to offer.

This inspired a flexible and ever changing logotype, a behaviour seen throughout the new branding. ‘Bagoss’ by Displaay Type Foundry was the perfect companion, bold enough to enabling the flexible needs but characterful enough for everyday messaging.

Building a Botanical Playground
We looked to help bring Canada Water Dockside to life by showcasing (almost) everything it has to offer. Collaborating with Liam Pitchford we created a set of highly detailed, refined botanical forms in UHD to start to create an immediate visual narrative around Dockside.

Three scenes were created:

Dockside is a playground created for the community that call it home today and for the residents and workers of the future. Each Botanic has a selection of community members flourishing in the most exciting part of London.

The Purpose of the project? Don’t just build properties. Build optimism.
For people. For London. For the nation. For the planet.

Here, teams are applying more considered and considerate thinking around how people work and who they work with. By looking at every aspect of endeavours in CanadaWater DockSide they’re creating the next level of place making.

Sustainable, healthy and people-first. A place where balance is embraced and ego rejected. Where considered opinions, not mindless options are embedded. Balanced spaces for London to think. Spaces to work, play, shop, eat and make more of.

The planet demands the development of more ethical, sustainable, respectful ideas to connect communities, support livelihoods, to grow responsibly and healthily. So the team looked beyond the immediately obvious into wider concerns to ensure they are building places, spaces, services and ideas that don’t just fit with right now, they leave us all fitter and healthier tomorrow.

Dockside mascots
An extensive library of Dockside mascots were created with ‘Arcade Studio’ adding an element of relatable, unconventional charm throughout the identity. Each character highlights aspects of the opportunities available to visitors and residents.

An entirely cohesive, yet varied visual system has been developed — from a radical wordmark that constantly reinvents itself — like the people who work, live and visit — to a playful iconography to help people navigate the site…

Iconography
Signage is hugely important in physical spaces, helping people navigate both the physical and a wide variety of printed and digital experiences.

Initially deployed functionally on maps and signage the work has also been used in supergraphics for local playgrounds, creating lightly branded moments in surrounding community areas.

You’ll find more than you were looking for on the Dockside — and the same can be said for the new visual identity.