Located in Telford, The QUAD is a multi-storey collaborative space designed to bridge the gap between education and employment. By teaching digital skills, supporting business growth and encouraging local entrepreneurship, it acts as a commercial catalyst for the local economy.
However, complex shared spaces like this face a significant challenge. How do you create a unified brand identity when the building houses multiple, distinct stakeholders, like Telford College, Invest Telford and Harper Adams?
The brief required an identity that felt progressive, industrial, and highly adaptable, delivering a comprehensive brand system that could live just as comfortably on a digital screen as it does physically navigating thousands of people through a four-storey building.
A brand beyond four walls
To secure immediate emotional buy-in from students, entrepreneurs and investors, we anchored the visual identity in the core proposition of ‘Beyond Four Walls.’
While the building itself provides the physical infrastructure, the true commercial value of The QUAD lies in the collaboration happening inside. So we developed a messaging framework built on the three strategic pillars of Limitless Collaboration, Business Acceleration and Evolving Education.
This bold, forward-thinking messaging required a visual identity that felt equally expansive. To visualise this, we designed a striking geometric logo consisting of four outward-pointing arrows, representing expansion, momentum and business growth.
But a whole new layer hides within the negative space of the mark, creating an additional four inward-pointing arrows. This draws focus to the centre while subtly representing the four walls and the four floors of the building itself, as well as the limitless potential the space aspires towards. This is a brand identity engineered for constant motion and growth.
A system of frictionless wayfinding
Because The QUAD is a busy, multi-level hub filled with students, entrepreneurs and visitors, wayfinding was a primary focus of the project. A beautiful brand is useless if people get lost in the building.
To solve this, the wayfinding system was built directly out of the core brand mark. By extracting and rotating the arrows from the logo, they become literal directional markers navigating visitors through the space.
This directional logic is paired with a highly distinct colour palette. The core brand elements use a stark, industrial mono palette, allowing these vibrant secondary colours to cut through. This creates an intuitive, colour-coded wayfinding system across the building’s four floors.
As for the wordmark itself, this was engineered to be completely dynamic. Because environmental constraints vary across the physical building, it needed to be flexible enough to shift depending on the space it sits within.
The architecture of collaboration
Another consideration was that The QUAD is a shared space, housing key local stakeholders like Invest Telford, Harper Adams and Telford College. A crucial part of the brief was defining how The QUAD and its tenants communicate together without the visual language becoming cluttered or competitive.
The solution was a distinct partnership communication system. When The QUAD hosts a joint event with a specific tenant, we introduced a clean ‘×’ symbol into the visual hierarchy using The QUAD’s bespoke typeface. This instantly communicates a collaboration while maintaining the hub’s core brand authority.
This collaborative logic extends directly into the physical building. It ensures that even when multiple organisations are sharing the space, The QUAD’s environmental design remains cohesive and easy to navigate.
Dynamic devices & visual language
The core identity system is designed to scale and adapt. By extracting a single arrow from the main logo mark, we created a flexible graphic device that can be repurposed as a solid graphic, an outline, or a dynamic image holder. Taking this a step further, the four-letter name ‘QUAD’ is leveraged as a framing device itself.
These framing devices showcase rich, vibrant photography imagery of smiling, engaged people immersing themselves in the hub’s facilities. This contrasts the industrial feel of the branding with the human, community-led reality of the space.
Clarity through typography hierarchy
To ensure the brand could communicate everything from large-scale wayfinding signage to accessible digital documents, we curated a complementary trio of typefaces:
- Kola: Used for standout moments, this unique sans-serif oozes character, giving the brand its futuristic and innovative edge.
- Montech V.02: An angled, quirky sans-serif that adds a layer of technical, digital personality.
- Alfabet: Used for body copy. This is a confident, simple sans-serif with a huge voice. Its highly legible characteristics ensure the brand meets all accessibility standards, aligning with the inclusive nature of the hub.
Finally, we tied the visual language together with a bespoke icon set that evokes a progressive, digital feel, perfectly suited for both the website and the physical signage.
A brand that lives & breathes
The result is a brand that actively participates in the environment it lives in. The QUAD now has a visual and verbal identity that acts as a physical embodiment of their values, helping people navigate the space and perfectly setting the stage for Telford’s next generation of digital pioneers.
Are you building a physical space that needs a dynamic, living identity? Based in Shrewsbury, we design brand systems that seamlessly translate from digital to physical, allowing your audience to navigate both. Get in touch, let’s talk.
