Project — Untitled Lab
Client — H&M Group
Background
H&M Group approached us to develop their brand strategy, naming and identity for their new talent brand division that creates purpose led brands with cultural icons.
The brief was to create a brand that would communicate the cultural understanding of the business to more traditional corporations, and also convince the cultural icons that it was at the right partner to work with to deliver global reach and infrastructure.
Thinking
The brand concept was built around the thought of 'Purposeful Ventures', celebrating that the brands that UL created were focussed both on a core reason for being, as well as the idea of venturing into territories unknown.
The logotype was created to capture the elegance of the fashion world and the confidence of mastheads within the world of culture. Bringing these two worlds together meant that we could be bold and confident with the use of type, but also light of touch with the wider kit of parts.
Photography
The direction for the imagery was inspired by the public anonymity of celebrities. The fact that the world of talent spends much of its time trying to cloak people's identities, or hide products behind closed doors until final release. This was brought to life through secretive crops, strong shadows masking parts of the imagery and even inverting images.
Delivery
As the brand is merely a portal to create brands of note for the future, it was important that it was white label but with character – as such, the master brand was predominantly monochromatic, but allowed for coloured to be picked from imagery to allow flex when talking to talent across a variety of genres.
