Work

La Monnaie

Brussels’ La Monnaie views the historic art form of opera through a present-day lens, so its communications should equally reflect our society today. For over a decade, Base has collaborated with artists to create provocative and visually arresting campaigns that are unique and unexpected each year—firmly positioning the opera house as a leader in its cultural field.
Most opera houses have a tried and tested formula for their communications, typically involving imagery of singers and sets, “baroquesque” typography, and name-dropping Mozart, Wagner, Verdi and the like. But under the direction of Peter de Caluwe, La Monnaie (a.k.a. De Munt) in Brussels has approached opera as a contemporary genre that bridges the past and present. His intention is to align the historic art form with modern society, addressing prominent issues and current affairs that affect people of all backgrounds. Based on this vision, we created a new visual identity for La Monnaie in 2007, and have since helped the director to communicate his ideas through annual campaigns. From the outset, we challenged the art direction by avoiding the classical and cliché opera imagery. Instead, we decided to collaborate with a different visual artist on each seasonal campaign, to gain access to beautiful and unexpected imagery. The new visual voice of La Monnaie became metaphorical, radical, cinematographic—the language of fashion and beauty—and brought a fresh and surprising perspective year after year. For the 2019-20 season, in line with a new seasonal structure that shifted from thematics to an “architecture” centered on creativity, illustrator Charlotte Chauvin “remixed” the La Monnaie identity with emotion-driven, Cocteau-style drawings connected to the pieces of the program. In 2020-21, de Caluwe felt it critical to explore the decline of democracy and society’s trust in politics. These themes were embodied in actual, grotesquely dramatic media snapshots of white male parliamentarians physically fighting in their respective country’s chambers of democracy—images so arresting that they appear to be staged. In capturing today’s unnerving political turbulence, the campaign aligned the institution directly with contemporary culture. Outside the expected channels like billboards and brochures, La Monnaie’s communications have also involved a freely distributed magazine that brought the opera world to life. We chose the name MMM, or Monnaie Munt Magazine, to address Belgium’s bilingualism and reach a larger potential audience. For more than a decade, we’ve channeled the intrinsic creativity of La Monnaie through artistic collaborations, divisive visuals and an evolving contemporary identity – helping the opera house become and remain a landmark in the field of culture. We’re still hitting the high notes in harmony.

Harmonizing opera with contemporary culture

Brand Transformation

High Notes

Art Direction

Book Design

Brand Strategy

Iles de Paix

As one of Belgium’s oldest NGOs, Iles de Paix’s mission is to promote sustainable food systems across the globe. A thorough overhaul of visuals and messaging, completed pro-bono, firmly re-establishes its vision and values while incorporating an iconic representation of the brand’s fundraising efforts.
Everyone has the right to food. So for 60 years, Belgian non-government organization Iles de Paix has supported farmers and citizens in the development of sustainable food systems, sources of autonomy, security and quality food. 
 
The NGO raises money to fund specific projects in the developing world, each referred to as “une île de paix”—an island of peace—with the aim to move towards impactful change one step at a time. One of its earlier nationwide fundraising campaigns involved selling little plastic figurines, which became an icon across Belgium and are still associated with the brand today.
 
This humanoid silhouette has become a critical element of the new Iles de Paix identity, incorporated into the logo as a dot above an X, while also acting as a multiplier across the communications. It represents the volunteers, donors, team members, farmers, collaborators, and experts who all contribute to the organization’s meaningful efforts—a human chain around the globe.
 
Iles de Paix’s outdated visuals and messaging drastically needed to become more contemporary, attractive and dynamic, to compete with younger NGOs and to feel appropriate for a very different, more globalized world than when the organization first began. Through intense workshops with internal and external stakeholders, a total makeover resulted in verbalizing a new mission statement, clearer positioning, a new visual toolbox, a revised tone of voice, various campaign concepts, and even fresh ideas to raise funds.
 
The work for Iles de Paix was completed entirely pro-bono as part of an ongoing yearly initiative. Given the same resources and dedication as any other project, the team was able to rejuvenate the organization strategically, verbally, graphically and visually, so it can continue its mission to guarantee the right to food through enacting change in the fields, in our cities, and on our plates.

Nourishing the identity of a historic NGO

Food for Thought

Brand Identity

Comédie de Genève

A century’s worth of theatrical excellence has taken the stage at one of Geneva’s principal performing arts institutions. Now settled into a dazzling, purpose-built new home, La Comédie has an updated identity that matches its ambitions to shake-up reality with surprising, thought-provoking productions for another 100 years. 
Steeped in history, the Comédie de Genève has delighted theater-goers of all ages and backgrounds since its founding in 1909. Birthed to offer everyone access to art and beauty, it has grown into a much-loved local institution that, despite its name, evokes all manner of emotions through the wide variety of performances. Laughing, crying, and everything in between.
A recent move to a much larger, bolder building—designed by FRES Architectes in the city’s burgeoning Eaux-Vives district—has allowed directors Natacha Koutchoumov and Denis Maillefer to flex their creative muscles, scaling-up their experiments at La Comédie’s previous home into shows that fulfill their ambitious vision for presenting new perspectives on the past, present and future.
To accompany this important milestone, a new identity crystalizes the center’s boundary-pushing spirit. La Comédie welcomes everyone through its doors, so this identity had to be accessible and friendly, while still reflecting the ambition and thoughtfulness of the programming.
Each communication medium is envisioned as fertile ground for providing audiences with experiences that challenge and confront reality. Bright pink serves as a strong visual connector, and a typeface with vertically staggered letters both expresses a sense of movement and mimics the architectural profile of the new building.
Imagery that palpably displays the joy of reuniting with loved ones after so long apart was chosen to entice audiences to meet one another again at the unique building, turning it into a place that’s full of life. Messaging conveys the adventures that audiences can expect to encounter during the theater, contemporary dance, and circus productions hosted during the 2021-22 season and beyond, as well as sparking dialogues outside the walls.
The broader goal is to expand this platform for French-speaking actors to work with local and global directors, as a venue that’s open to both Swiss and international artists. The identity helps to elevate La Comédie to its position as a production house operating at a European level, and will enable it to reach new heights as an iconic theater with international influence.

Emboldening the theater of multiplied experiences

Clarifying Vision

Provoke Reality

Copywriting

Signage

Bozar

Brussels’ center for fine arts Bozar is a catch-all for culture in the heart of the city. Eschewing a logo and empowering the ubiquity of its name, the institution’s updated identity converses with its audience, reflects its dynamism, and responds in real-time.
As Belgium’s number-one cultural institution, Bozar amalgamates music, fine arts, cinema, architecture, literature and more alongside a restaurant, a brasserie and a bookstore––all within a grand building designed by Victor Horta in 1929. Bozar’s rich offering draws visitors from all ages and walks of life, but its visual identity had become serious, rigid, and slightly boring. It was time for a refresh.
Taking precedent from some of Europe’s top cultural venues––with which Bozar plays in the same league––a more daring, flexible and impactful approach was required to elevate it from an established institution, to a leading name in Belgium and beyond. To achieve this, a set of five principles were laid out to guide a new identity and shape the brand’s future communications.
Firstly, acknowledging and leveraging the fact that Bozar has become a word with its own meaning and gravitas. Since the name was controversially introduced by Base in 2004, it has become ingrained in the vocabulary of Belgians and is used as both noun and verb. Rather than designing a new logo, we chose to simply embrace this moniker.
The second principle involved creating a conversational tone of voice––one that asks questions of its audience and invites them into a dialogue. Delivered via a neutral typeface and a unique multilingualism, with custom flourishes introduced through ornamental punctuation.
Next, communicating in real-time with messaging that reacts to current events and embraces the spontaneity of content created during its programming.
Principle four introduces radical simplicity, because less is more impactful.
And finally, acknowledging Bozar as a place in perpetual movement, constantly shifting its programme and audience, which is reflected in a modular visual system for its digital and social platforms that can be easily implemented by the institution’s communications team.
Bozar’s long-standing relationship with Base allowed for a deep dig into the heart of the institution, in order to rediscover and convey its energy in a living voice. More conversations have already started.

Lifting a Belgian icon from established staple to leading voice

Cultural Bazaar

For over a century, FTD has innovated in the floral delivery market by creating an international network of independent businesses, and connecting them with customers around the world. Tapping into the joy that we all experience through giving, a fresh identity brings the brand up-to-date, while celebrating its local-first approach, rich history, and stories of its talented florists. 
Way ahead of its time, FTD took a bottom-up approach to building a network of local florists, allowing these small businesses to sell and distribute flowers globally. It grew into a vast, wide-reaching international cooperative of florists who rely on the company’s logistical prowess to deliver lovingly prepared floral arrangements on behalf of customers. For over 111 years, the company has pioneered this shop-local model–one that is evermore critical in the post-pandemic world.
The floral delivery market has shifted to a more direct-to-consumer model in recent years, with retail giants and startups alike offering their own services. But what FTD can profess is a history of innovation, decades of experience and expertise, and a commitment to supporting independent, family-run companies that is more relevant than ever. A refresh of the brand had to restate this heritage and push the local-first message, so that FTD could once again become the leader of the pack.
Since the traditional etiquette of giving through handwritten notes and personal communication has been somewhat lost, yet remains wholeheartedly valued, the principal strategic move was to focus on this universal harbinger of joy––which also underscores the fundamental idea behind FTD’s business. Encouraging customers to “Give Better,” the new branding centers on the warmth and personal touches that go hand-in-hand with sending flowers, whatever the occasion, bringing FTD back to its roots at the forefront of personal giving.
The brand’s heritage was also reclaimed visually. The Mercury Man, FTD’s faithful insignia that is proudly displayed in florists’ windows in even the tiniest French villages, was too important not to retain. He is now accompanied by a logomark in a new contemporary typeface that also scribes the company’s founding date, providing a stamp of historic excellence and projecting its experience as a leader to today’s customers.
A lush and confident shade of green, chosen to complement blooms of all genera, forms the backbone of the identity. Simple art direction allows the beauty of the flowers to do all the work, uplifted by pale tones and soft radial gradients that highlight the shapes and hues of bouquets.
FTD’s relaunch galvanized the entire company; and the internal sales team delighted in sharing the updated look and feel with its florist collective––who now feel like they are part of a brand that truly represents their craft. Stories about these artisans also form a narrative through the company’s marketing and social media campaigns, providing well-deserved exposure to the businesses that facilitate the joy of giving, which is what FTD has always been about.

A heritage company reclaiming the lost art of giving

Flower Power

Packaging

Digital Strategy

Virisens

Bringing together the best of nature and biotech, Virisens is the newest Swiss skincare brand combining the purest form of cannabis molecules with the latest generation of safe cosmetic ingredients. Appealing to a niche market of skincare connoisseurs with an affinity for cutting-edge cosmetology, Virisens was created with highly potent anti-aging ingredients while remaining vegan and cruelty-free. We worked on the entire brand identity and joined forces with advertising agency Miind for a 360° approach.

Giving your skin a cannabis prescription

From Product to Brand

Swiss Cannabis Science

The Substation

The Substation is a unique large-scale multi-purpose gallery, performance space and dance studio housed inside a former industrial building in Melbourne’s inner west. Presenting a curated program of contemporary and experimental work to a broad audience, while simultaneously operating as a vital community hub. The Substation inhabits a unique space within the Australian cultural landscape. What began as a website redesign soon evolved into a complete re-imaging of their brand and communications. Beginning with the visual identity, we proposed a system that operates much like file directory tree syntax. The forward slash within the wordmark acts to intersect and aggregate ideas, and allowing for endless experimentation and play. 
Supporting this system is an (anti-)logo designed to subvert the aforementioned structure, and to evolve over time. Launching with 15 iterations, these will be updated seasonally reflecting the artists and themes present within the programming in any given year. This curated aspect of the brand identity ensures it remains deeply and visibly connected to culture, and the context within which it operates. Building upon the ideas in the brand system, we redesigned The Substation website as an evolving archive. The new website provides greater access to the unique diversity of current and past programming, and a deeper perspective on the organization itself. Notions of compression and release are central to the experience of the new site; whether it’s the syntax of the page titles, the way content is blended together via gradient, or obscured via static and noise, or the “double squeeze” effect of the menu. Accessibility hand-in-hand with experimentation.

Emphasizing accessibility hand-in-hand with experimentation

Going Digital

Connecting Culture and Community

Digital

Berney Associés

Charles Berney founded the Berney Associés Fiduciary company in Geneva in the 90s. Although the family-run business is in direct competition with Switzerland’s Big 4, their main advantage has always been found in their personal commitment to their clients - partners and family members offering a deeply personalized approach. Today, the family business is being handed over to the next generation: Laurent, Frédéric and their associates. With a traditional background and history, the new era needed a fresh face that showed what the future of financial counseling looked like. The main goal of this rebranding was to create a contemporary but realistic image of the company’s future. Anchored in values of excellence, precision and safety it was also important to show the new approach of this young, dynamic and uninhibited business. We developed an image that set Berney apart from its competitors - a strong font gave the brand the personality it deserved and highly contrasted but corporate colors bridged old and new. Finally, we made sure Berney was ready for their sector's digital revolution by helping them build a strong on-line presence. We created a website that doubled up as a communication platform so the company could use it to update the conferences they were attending, business news, fun facts and case studies to help them anchor their practice.

How to brand the new generation of financial consulting

Sharp, Serious and Swiss

Caran d'Ache

2015 marked the 100th anniversary of Caran d’Ache, a Swiss favorite known worldwide, for school, office, art, and luxury writing supplies. In recognition of this momentous occasion, Base was tasked with concentrating its brand around a central identity that is unique, meaningful, and firmly rooted in its history. We created a new logotype and a custom typeface that pays tribute to the foundation story of the company and serves as a link between the departments of Haute Écriture, Office, and Colors of Caran d’Ache. The renewed identity serves as the foundation for implementing the company’s global development strategy.

Caran d’Ache writes its own story

Typeface Design

West Space

West Space is a vital non-profit, artist-led organization in Melbourne, Australia, focused on supporting local and underrepresented artists at all stages of their careers. Base worked with the West Space team to evolve their brand identity, and develop a new digital platform that extends their art and ideas beyond the gallery space (while we were all stuck at home!). This involved close collaboration and heaps of trust, since the majority of the process played out over Zoom. Since its inception, West Space has challenged definition and championed diversity, creative freedom, and risk-taking. So early on we realized we needed to avoid a style-guide-driven approach to branding, in favor of developing a visual language over time. This began with a strong foundation; a new industrious condensed sans-serif typeface inspired by scaffolding. Its exaggerated punctuation provides the organization a distinctive visual language, while a unique set of symbols / emojis ties to its program. Operating as a metaphor for the role the gallery plays in supporting Australian artists and their work, it also acts as the scaffolding of the brand. A platform upon which to experiment and build. Upon this foundation we built West Space Offsite: a new digital platform rapidly developed during Melbourne’s COVID lockdown to enable publishing artist-led content online. Sitting both beside and beyond West Space’s physical exhibition program, it extends art and ideas outside of the gallery space. Coinciding with a move into a new physical gallery space in Collingwood Yards – an independent not-for-profit social enterprise – our work marks a new chapter in the West Space story. But it’s far from over. We’re continuing our collaboration with a comprehensive website refresh launching soon.

Rethinking the white cube gallery as a Rubik’s cube

From Startup To Scaling up

Onsite offline. Offsite online.

Federal Studio

Federal is a Swiss studio, based in Geneva and Zürich, which specializes in photography. Its new brand identity reflects the studio’s artistic approach, one that melds contemporary art and the corporate world, deconstructs codes, orchestrates chaos, dabbles with paradoxes, and playfully arouses viewers’ senses.
In shaping Federal’s identity, we found inspiration in Helvetic culture and its many contradictions, like the tendency to seldom agree with one another yet always decide together; to abide by the rules yet shake them up when necessary; and, to be understated yet unabashedly quirky. These paradoxes infuse Federal’s vision in photographing art for business, and lead its work to reveal elegance in chaos, bring order to disorder, and deconstruct clichés by playing with established codes.
With its new identity, Federal has become a gateway to surprising experiences and unexpected face-offs. On its website, images are superimposed to create unsettling contrasts, and the tone of voice shows us how new meaning can arise from the joint use of totally opposite words: Iconic &amp; Iconoclastic, Beautiful &amp; Ugly, Chaotic &amp; Orderly… a universe of harmonious dissonance created by Régis Golay.

Harmonious dissonance

A gateway to surprising experiences

Mai Lam

Vietnamese fashion designer Mai Lam is a force of nature. Her fascinating and moving story from riches to rags to entrepreneurial artist has shaped a mindset that fuses pride in the history and culture of Vietnam with a contemporary vision of the country. And in combining workers’ jackets with intricately detailed embroidery, or vintage silk coats with knock-off t-shirts, Mai Lam’s garments embody this mindset in a collision of real and fake; cheap and chic. 
This creative chaos produces beautiful and original clothes, but previously caused some confusion from a brand perspective. One of her most prominent endeavors, the primely located Mai Lam boutique in Ho Chi Minh City needed structure and separation from her other artistic pursuits. Her fashion line required a strategy that would set it apart, and set her up for global success.
When the designer first turned to Base for an outsider’s input, we traveled to Vietnam for a photoshoot with our long-time collaborator Régis Golay. The photos immersed the apparel in the dynamic, modern city streets from which Mai Lam draws so much of her inspiration. Working alongside these two artists, we brought order and sensibility to their creative concepts, resulting in powerful imagery that truly captures the spirit of the brand.
The brand strategy that followed adapted existing elements––logotype, photography, narrative––into a framework that provided specific communications tools and a digital focus, to invite customers into her world via a website and social media.
Given total freedom, no expectations, unwavering confidence, and pure creativity, we transformed a disorganized artistic project on a fancy street into a revived, radical fashion label with clear vision, direction, and international appeal. Bringing a brand to a global stage that has a very local perspective, that’s inherently Vietnamese, and is reflective of Mai Lam’s boundless energy and masterful execution was a breath of fresh air for the world of high fashion.

Clashing cultural elements inform a dynamic Vietnamese fashion brand

Cheap vs Chic

Neybor

Co-living could solve the issue of increasing density in our cities, yet many brands that sell shared accommodation are cold, clinical, and not particularly enticing for potential residents. Belgium’s Neybor envisions the future of co-living as a series of much warmer, more soulful environments, and its identity leads with the idea that home isn’t a place, it’s a feeling.
In the next 20 years, many cities are predicted to double in size due to overwhelming urbanization. While co-living seems to be a promising solution, the dominant tendency of players in this booming sector is to sell standardized adult dormitories by way of cold, generic brands. Neybor chose to view the concept differently. Founded by a group of architects and designers, the company obsessively focused on one central question: when does a space become a home? The answer was channeled into carefully considered interior design, building community spirit, and, of course, branding––which is where we came in. The brand identity was developed based on the intangible, yet universal idea that home isn’t a place, but a feeling. To bring this idea to life, talented illustrator Olga Prader was commissioned to embody this emotionally driven concept through a series of whimsical drawings. Her sketches seamlessly interact with subtle art direction and a witty tone of voice to create a soulful brand for contemporary living. Neybor’s tone of voice is casual, friendly, personal, and welcoming, as if potential residents are speaking to a friend inviting them to stay. Its website is set up as a place for telling stories about home, and presenting homes with stories. The uptake in Neybor properties has boomed, and the company has opened three locations in less than a year since launching. The brand’s home-oriented approach, putting its “Neybors” first and foremost, aims to elevate the standard of living in cities and a points to a bright future for the co-living phenomenon.

Ensuring that a co-living brand feels like home

Fair Share

Silversquare

Coworking pioneer Silversquare has provided spaces for entrepreneurs to thrive since 2008. But with a huge surge in competition from similar business models, the brand needed a refresh to prove why individuals and companies should choose its offering over others. A dynamic, user-friendly identity system comprising simple elements was designed to be combined in limitless ways, in the same way that Silversquare envisions its spaces.
Silversquare was early to the coworking game. Created by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs, it workspaces for companies of various sizes across Belgium and Luxembourg, whether they require a hot desk, a private office, or a bespoke solution for a larger team. Each of the sites is designed and crafted by a guest decorator or artist to create uniquely compelling venues, As the popularity of coworking increased during the 2010s, so did the number of rivals offering a very similar model to Silversquare’s, and all touting their unique selling points or attributes. Silverquare needed help communicating the core characteristics that made it so successful initially. In this case, youthfulness and a flamboyant personality were what first attracted occupants. So these were reflected in a dynamic, user-friendly brand identity system consisting of simple elements that can be combined in limitless ways. A rudimental square became a tool for compartmentalizing information, visuals and various options for potential clients on physical billboards and marketing materials. On the website, the quadrangles are divided and shifted through animations, serving as flexible boxes that can display anything required. The tagline “The most exciting square meters in town” was added to give the impression of space to rent, while alluding to the vibrant communities that frequent the different locations. The “SQ” abbreviation applied across communications refers to the company’s name, and also implies an area of undetermined size to be utilized. By evoking a mastery of spatial planning, the new brand work helps to position Silversquare as an enabler for professionals and their entrepreneurial endeavors.

Branding the most exciting square meters in coworking

Hot Desks

ING Bank

When ING Bank held an exhibition of its contemporary art collection, the challenge was to lift visitors beyond passive spectators, and engage them as part of a dynamic conversation around the artworks. To do this, it was imperative to go beyond the typical poster/banner/website trilogy by creating a smartphone tool that would articulate the themes and kickstart the dialogues.
Hosted at the ING Art Center in Brussels, an exhibition themed around “Love. Hate. Debate.” was held to showcase the history, breadth and diversity of ING Bank’s contemporary art collection. Using the often polarizing and contentious nature of contemporary art, the intention was to invite questions and opinions from the audience––enabling them to draw closer and form personal connections with the works on display. To help facilitate participation in the debate, a holistic communications system was required that would integrate all aspects of the show: curation (what to see), communication (what to say), and experience (how to interact with it). A full kit of tools, from spatial to digital, messaging to imaging, web app to catalog, was developed to lure visitors into discussions. Upon entering the gallery, a larger banner read: “This is not an exhibition. And you are not just a visitor.” This set the scene for a series of introductory prompts; first impressions one might form when viewing contemporary art. "My kid could have drawn that", "Do you see what I see?", "It's just a piece of wood, right?" These statements and questions invited a wide and diverse public to entertain an open dialogue with the artwork. Avoiding the hassle of downloading yet another app, a Progressive Web App––a website that adopts app-like functionalities––was developed to offer supplementary commentary and additional information about the works and themes. It was critical not to distract visitors from the powerful emotional connection experienced when face-to-face with the art. Instead of a catalog, a book titled “Stories of a Collection” was designed as a keepsake––documenting the history of the collection and allowing narratives to continue far beyond the exhibition. The 360-degree approach to building a journey through the collection also encompassed texts, furniture, spatial layout, and images that together created a unified experience. The result of this co-curation and collaboration was a great symbiosis between ING and all the creatives involved in the process: designers, strategists, scenographers and developers. This synergy allowed us to imbue ING’s collection with intrigue and allure, and develop a unique story around the exhibition.

Inducing meaningful conversations around a contemporary art collection

State of the Art

Caudalie

A pioneer in sustainable skincare for 25 years, Caudalie required a makeover that aligned its packaging with the same eco-credentials as its revolutionary products. Applying a “Backwards Branding” methodology, the brand was built around the redesigned packaging that uses recycled plastic, and carefully sourced paper and materials, to minimise waste and lower the company’s carbon footprint.
Benefiting from the visual nature of social media and its ability to educate, the skincare market has seen consumers become more demanding of creative visual content and cleaner, better products––prompting brands to re-think their packaging, boxes, messaging and photography. One such brand is Caudalie, established in the French wine region of Bordeaux in 1995, where founders Mathilde and Bertrand Thomas created the very first vino-therapy beauty products. A quarter of a century later, the company decided to strengthen and clarify its brand to expand its cult following in one of the world’s fastest-growing industries. Using an approach we like to call <a href="https://www.basedesign.com/opinions/backwards-branding">Backwards Branding</a>, the work began by rethinking the first physical object the consumer interacts with: the packaging. Since Caudalie’s skincare formulations are all sustainably produced, it became apparent that its containers, boxes and wrappings should follow the same ethos. Refocusing on recycled materials, particularly plastics, and sourcing other materials with minimal environmental impact led to the creation of a new packaging system that better reflected Caudalie's commitment to sustainability. Straight-forward, visually striking, ecological and transparent, this packaging became the brand’s best ambassador. Launched with the Resveratrol Lift line of creams and serums, which received high praise on social media, the rebrand was rolled out gradually to allow Caudalie to transition to the refreshed look and feel. The new branding remains true to its original image but elevated with a more minimal aesthetic through discrete transformations of typography, iconography, logo and product color range. As our collaboration with Caudalie has continued, the company has also revealed its 100% Plastic Collect initiative––which saw it recycle 600 tons of plastic in 2020––and maintained its participation in the 1% for the Planet reforestation project. The brand’s commitment to sustainability is now apparent across its full output, so customers can rest assured that their purchases are both good for their skin and good for the planet.

A facelift for France's pioneer natural skincare brand

Skin Deep

Energy Observer

Through expeditions and innovations, the Energy Observer ship is exploring practical solutions to accelerate ecological transition whilst developing new technologies in electro-hydrogen power. These big ideas and actions needed to be more approachable and understandable for a broad audience, so the data and experiments were translated into valuable, easy-to-read information that can be followed online by anyone.
Climate change continues to be a pressing but challenging subject in today’s world, and plainly explaining the issues and potential solutions to avert cataclysmic disaster has become imperative. One of these potential solutions, the advancement of hybrid electro-hydrogen power, is the focus of Energy Observer—a repurposed racing catamaran exclusively powered by this renewable energy source. The brainchild of sailboat racer Victorien Erussard and professional diver Jérôme Delafosse, who hope to raise awareness of a more sustainable future, the project involves a seven-year expedition around the world to highlight pioneering energy alternatives, and explore green solutions through science and tech. Due to the complexity of the project and the topic, Energy Observer required a brand and a digital experience that could clearly communicate its vision and goals, and allow the public to follow along with the journey. With an “Elon Musk meets Cousteau” feel to the project, a global narrative was crafted to simplify Energy Observer’s story as the mother brand, and to embody its two principal elements. The Odyssey charts the journey of the vessel itself, allowing audiences to follow the “logbook” of the catamaran in real-time via an immersive dashboard on the website. A map and a timeline that track its route reveal, with a simple click, additional information about each stage of the voyage and the content produced. The Innovations portion of the site uncovers greater detail about the Energy Observer laboratory, and its research and development across science, engineering and technology in renewable energy. Since Energy Observer set sail in 2017, the team has made huge strides in demonstrating the possibilities of hybrid electro-hydrogen as a green energy source. By sharing its progress in a clear, coherent and visually compelling format, it is educating a wide audience in the potential of this game-changing technology, which could be critical in the fight against the impending climate crisis.

Clarifying the mission of an experimental round-the-world odyssey

Push the Boat Out

Naming

Allies and Morrison

While most architecture firms use a website to display a portfolio of work, the Allies and Morrison site offers a much deeper exploration into the context and empathy behind each of its projects. Conceived as a “hub of knowledge”, the digital experience reveals previously unseen facets of the design process, and has become an important tool of discovery for both internal and external use.
In contrast to many “starchitect” bureaus, Allies and Morrison approaches its work with a focus on fostering communities through context-driven projects. The international firm of architects and urbanists based in London has a growing team and strong convictions on contemporary architecture, so decided to embark on a rebrand that better reflected its heritage and aspirations. An extensive strategy phase led to the idea of using the website as a platform that deeply reflected the very essence of Allies and Morrison's practice, which would also become the primary medium to express and define the new brand personality. The focus shifted from the firm itself to the projects, and their impact on the wider environment. Traditional brand codes like the logo were therefore deemed less important, while philosophy was pushed to the fore. Instead of finding the practice name in the top left corner of the homepage, a search bar invites visitors to explore an immense hub of knowledge. Internally, this function serves as a database so employees can easily find specific projects or initiatives. Externally, it allows curious parties to type in any word, material, location, process or team member and discover all of the content linked to their search. The classic navigation tabs are replaced by themes and preoccupations that are important to Allies and Morrison, and direct links to drawings and models that sit at the very core of the craft. Since the firm is more concerned with location context––whether that’s from a historical, ecological or societal perspective––than solely the appearance of the finished building, the portfolio section of the website is designed as a space for extensive case studies that take the reader through the full process and story of each project. Stepping away from the classic portfolio website often presented by architecture studios allowed us to brand Allies and Morrison through a digital experience, using their values and beliefs as the main elements for their new identity.

Unearthing the DNA of one of the UK’s most prominent architecture firms

Site Specific

Deezer

In the competitive landscape of music streaming apps, Deezer needed to offer its users a real, personalized experience. Based around a single idea, “you bring the moment, we bring the music,” a specific interface was introduced across all dimensions of the brand via a shared visual vocabulary – from the smartphone to the ads – to which music lovers could feel a genuine connection.
Digital streaming quickly overtook physical CDs and records in the mid-2000s to become the dominant resource for playing music, and competition between various apps offering similar services was immediately hot. Personalization became the key to enticing users to favor a particular platform, since music choices are driven by individual preferences, moods, and tastes. For French company Dezeer, our plan was to advertise curated track selections that catered towards all of life’s moments, essentially providing a soundtrack for every occasion. In verbalizing this strategy and crafting a tone of voice, we created a simple system to show what Deezer can do for its listeners: You bring X and Deezer brings the music. Uniting the brand’s communications and its app through one shared visual (hieroglyphic) vocabulary, a mix of typefaces, icons, colors, and shapes were applied across all channels and media. This created a seamless experience where the borders between print and digital, product and brand disappear, and on-line and off-line are constantly overlapping. It also allowed Deezer to adopt a more organic and consistent approach to its communications. With users spread across 180 countries, the brand’s character had to remain consistent yet adaptable to local requirements and cultures. To highlight Deezer’s ability to amplify life in whatever situation, the brand uses a playful tone of voice that is always culturally relevant and on point. Ultimately, we helped Deezer develop a coherent and unified brand that speaks to users all over the world, and gave them the tools to transform music listeners into music lovers.

Changing the tune of music streaming

Sound Up

andSons

A luxury chocolatier in… Los Angeles? Using creativity that’s quintessentially Californian, AndSons has broken the mold of traditional confectionery in every sense. Base channeled this into branding and packaging that presents layers of contrasting forms, visuals and ideas, and elevates the products into even more desirable gifts. 


Desire is what drives consumers to indulge in a luxury item like chocolate. These small, sumptuous sweets are given as gifts to make the recipient feel special, loved and impressed by the gifter. This exchange of goods and emotions can be elevated by beautiful design and thoughtful packaging, ensuring the contents are even more desirable. In a crowded market, impact is key, and branding has power.
Now chocolate and Beverly Hills aren’t really two things that are associated with one another. But when a family confectionary shop just off Rodeo Drive decided to launch its own brand, the worlds of chocolatier expertise and LA creativity collided in spectacular fashion. The mother retired, and her sons Marc and Phil Covitz took over the business, teaming up with inventive chocolatier Kriss Harvey to playfully rethink the traditions of the confectionery world. AndSons was born, and its branding needed to reflect its exceptional new take on luxury chocolate, and create that all-important desirability.
Since andSons is so far from the chocolate houses of Europe––both geographically and conceptually––the brand bravely experiments and pushes the industry in a new direction. A stark departure from packaging tropes has allowed andSons to keep its distance and remain true to its place.
California’s creativity and spirited optimism is expressed through bright colors and naively hand-cut illustrations, juxtaposed with a sophisticated typeface that pays homage to the classicism and tradition of chocolate-making. The graphics are placed on white backgrounds to allow for customization, together forming an association with the elevated aura and collectibility of modern art. Flip-lid boxes became dual horizontal sliding sections that represent two sons, two generations, and the dichotomy of innovation vs heritage.
With packaging that’s as delectable as its contents, a visual identity system that’s playful yet elegant, and a vision that brings a new perspective to chocolate, andSons is able to fulfil the desires of both customers and gift recipients. All without a brown box or gold letter in sight.

Driving desire with a new perspective on fine chocolate

In for a Treat

Gillion

To ensure century-old construction company Gillion stands out in today’s competitive market, its builders are positioned as experts in their field and its model was shifted from B2B to B2B2C. This new consumer-oriented focus also informed an identity that appears to be in perpetual construction, valorizing the building process and breaking the codes of a traditional industry.
One hundred years of experience in building the future has helped family-owned Belgian construction company Gillion to bring projects across multiple sectors from concept to reality. At its heart, it is a company of builders, who possess a deep knowledge and savoir-faire that is rarely celebrated or communicated to the public by the industry. The value of this essential role in the development of our urban spaces became the focus of the rebrand for Gillion, which put a spotlight on these builders rather than leaving them behind the scenes. Another important strategic move was to shift the positioning of Gillion from a B2B to a B2B2C company, helping end users to better understand the services they are receiving. This was achieved in-part by a new visual identity, created to valorise the building process while introducing a fresh perspective to this industry. The brand's updated visual language refers to its unique building spirit, with a logo, visual and copy assets all envisioned to be in perpetual construction. ​​To help establish this identity, Gillion’s construction sites became in-situ communication touch-points for the outside world. Large, bright-yellow tarpaulins featuring wordplays and real-time information provided surrounding neighborhoods with updates and plans for next steps. The identity was also applied to practical, visible items like jackets, helmets and trucks, as well as all things print and digital, ensuring it could be seen and felt everywhere––both internally and externally. Fresh eyes on a company that had been operating for a century imbued a new energy into its communications. Through restoring value to the role of the builder, we established a greater sense of trust and confidence in Gillion as an authority in its field.

Highlighting expertise in the construction industry

Build Better

ifaw

In order to undertake its critical work improving the welfare of animals and people alike, IFAW needed to reach a younger and broader audience that shared its values and believed in its mission. Through new reportage-style messaging, documentary-esque imagery and more dialogue with its audience, the non-profit organization was able to significantly increase engagement and donations, so it can continue to save the world. 


Trust, in this day and age, is a rare and invaluable commodity. And it’s one that NGOs like the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) are traditionally built upon, despite an opaque system that sees donors give, and organizations provide little information in return. While this monolinear approach might have worked in the past, young philanthropists are demanding more transparency and tangible results in exchange for their hard-earned cash.
To successfully meet the challenges of the next 50 years, Base strategically determined that organizations should be less monolithic, and instead increase dialogue with their constituents. For IFAW––which has explored new ways to improve conditions for animals and people across the globe for the past 50 years––this meant improving its messaging on population and habitat conservation, channeled through fact-driven activism rather than beautification or sensationalism.
The team saw the benefit in defining a set of clear principles to help guide its mission and engage the public in its causes. These ideas inform messaging in a tone that’s direct and to-the-point, using language and visual treatments that simply explain the issues being tackled, and calls to action that spell out how concerned parties can help. 
Online, graphics take a back seat, but support the “bite-sized” informative texts in the form of animations that connect problems and solutions. A focus on documentary-style photography shows experts at work in the field––a departure from the pretty pictures or shocking scenes used by similar organizations. Along with interactive infographics and an explorable map, the immersive website is able to both present facts and tell stories.
Our work with IFAW provoked other NGOs to form similar bi-directional relationships with their audiences. This openness and transparency cultivated trust in a new generation of younger donors who are aligned with and feel passionate about IFAW’s mission to protect animals, people and the planet. This has allowed the organization to continue its vital work strongly and effectively––something we’re very proud to have contributed towards.

Engaging a new generation of donors who demand a better planet

Conserving Trust

Bob Dylan Center

The life and work of Bob Dylan is celebrated at a new cultural center in Tulsa, which aims to inspire and influence generations of music fans. Pulling elements from Dylan’s archives, from annotated manuscripts to woodblock-printed posters, Base captured the spirit of his 60-year career with an identity developed in reverence to his craft. 

No one represents the sound of Americana like Bob Dylan. Layering twangy guitar strings, high-pitched harmonica harmonies, and masterful storytelling through song––which earned him a Nobel Prize, no less––his music is as important to US culture today as it was in the 1960s and 70s. (Who’s humming the riff from ‘Hurricane’ while reading this?).

Along with the release of a critically acclaimed new album in 2020, the creation of a cultural venue dedicated to Dylan’s life and career was announced for the Tulsa Arts District. As the primary public venue for The Bob Dylan Archive, this center will curate and exhibit an extraordinary collection of more than 100,000 items spanning the musician’s career, and facilitate the study and appreciation of his music and worldwide cultural significance.
When imagining an iconic visual identity system for the center, we sought to celebrate 20th-century Americana through imagery based on protest posters of the 60s. For both the on- and offline presence, the ink-blue annotations found in Dylan’s manuscripts provided inspiration. Typefaces evocative of American newspapers, but with a contemporary flair, and the woodblock types used for many of Dylan’s concert posters and record sleeves also served as influences for the final product. The resulting logotype visually fuses the familiar (Bob Dylan) with the new (The Center) while emphasizing the importance of the site’s location in Tulsa.
Slated to open in 2021, in a building by world-renowned architecture firm Olson Kundig, the center will serve to educate, motivate and inspire visitors to engage their own capacity as creators. And its holistic brand experience will help create an appropriate home for one of America’s most important artists.

Representing the life’s work of one of America’s greatest songwriters

Mr Tambourine Man

The New York Times:  Food Festival

The first New York Times Food Festival aimed to democratize the news organization’s culinary content, by assembling top chefs from across the city for two days of public tastings, talks, and activities. Enticing the masses with a playful and festive identity, and a liberal serving of red, the sold-out event brought New Yorkers of all ages and backgrounds to enjoy food together in Bryant Park. 


NYT Cooking hosted its inaugural three-day Food Festival in one of NYC’s most beautiful locales, Bryant Park, bringing together the cream of New York's culinary scene for an “IRL experience” created to feel approachable and inclusive for attendees. A unique environment, identity and digital platform were all pivotal in achieving this while explaining, quite literally, what’s cooking.
The festival’s trio of events––The Park, The Talks and The Nights––celebrated food cultures and presented personal behind-the-scenes stories in distinct ways. Therefore, each required a unique voice and treatment, while still legible as part of a coherent system. We approached this like a set of ingredients that come together to make a meal, using playful and spontaneous graphic elements and gestures to represent the varied flavors of the events––all united by the color red.
For The Park, the web page mimicked the experience of discovering the myriad stalls at Bryant Park, via a grid structure that showcased each chef/restaurant with animations and images. The Talks page was designed with a more editorial feel that reflected the planned conversations, with modules across two columns activated by hovering over the hyperlinks.
Finally, The Nights page that listed evening activities was reversed in black, with a single column used to translate the intimate and bespoke quality of each dinner. Bringing it all together are small surprises scattered throughout the website, imbuing a sense of serendipity and fun.
Through its iconicity and festivity, the identity appealed to all of New York’s food fanatics and expanded the NYT’s subscriber base to include a broader audience. Tickets for the festival itself sold out in days, The Nights was fully booked within 24 hours, and the at-capacity festival garnered substantial media coverage. The proof of the identity’s success is therefore in the pudding.

All the best ingredients for a visual feast

Joy of Cooking

Orior

With sights set on global expansion, Irish furniture company Orior required an identity that embodies the DNA of its heritage, and a strategy for the brand that would catapult a family business to a leading position in a niche market. Base imparted a 360-degree visual ecosystem that celebrates the brand’s rich roots and real customers––flying the flag for Ireland’s take on luxury craft internationally.
When family-run Irish furniture business Orior set out to expand into the US in 2018, creative director Ciaran McGuigan naturally looked to the Italian megabrands he admired for inspiration. But when this direction fell flat, he seized an opportunity to look inward, define his company's values, and exploit its “Irishness” instead––eventually enabling Orior to successfully launch in another country and a highly competitive industry.
During on-site workshops, we pinpointed what makes Orior’s Irish roots significant: stamina, loyalty, grit, and heart. These traits guided a strategy that positioned the brand uniquely in a niche market, and offered a chance to tell a story about culture, craftsmanship, and connection. A new way to look at furniture, made lovingly (and perhaps unexpectedly) in Ireland.
Since Orior’s signature is contemporary twists on timeless designs (picture a traditional sofa in royal-blue velvet), we reflected this approach in the identity and art direction. In the logotype, O’s and R’s are tweaked for more personality, and two typefaces were selected to balance classic and contemporary. Emerald green used liberally across communications aptly represents the Emerald Isle, further embodying the country’s DNA in the furniture brand.
Our first editorial shoot captured products with flash photography as part of lively, dynamic scenes, rather than in empty interiors. Another campaign features real Orior customers interacting with their furniture, while more web photos reveal the workshops, tools, and craftspeople fabricating the designs. This imagery forms a consistent visual ecosystem spanning from digital to print to spatial.
When the brand relaunched in Manhattan, the press latched onto the idea of Irish design as a warmer, more authentic alternative to some European counterparts. And customers found comfort in knowing the first name of the artisan making their couch. Orior became the poster child for transparency and personality in the furniture industry, differentiating it from existing heavyweights in this sector.

Revealing the authenticity and heart of Irish design

Part of the Furniture

Studio Brussel

Once a driving force for Belgian youth culture, Studio Brussel had lost its edge. We helped the radio station reclaim its position as a leader in the country’s music sector through an identity and a typeface that assigns a visual voice to the sounds of a new generation. This rejuvenation began inside the company, and expanded to capture a fresh audience by way of engaging content that we brought alive through digital tools.
In the age of downloads and streaming services, radio still plays a vital role in discovering new musical talents, curating a sound of the moment, and forming communities of listeners. Studio Brussel – a popular Dutch-speaking radio station in Belgium – has done just that since it was founded in the 1980s. Through several genre shifts, visual campaigns and reinventions – just like the artists it supports – the station has continued to set trends and capture the zeitgeist.
Although it maintained a vivacious and youthful energy, Studio Brussel had lost its edge and become increasingly mainstream. The leadership decided to revamp the brand identity to revisit its Rock’n’Roll roots, reclaim the gritty spirit, and reconnect with its fan base of young people. Keeping its essence while igniting a shift in programming and content creation, we were able to rejuvenate the radio channel while reconnecting to its position as the major reference for music culture in Belgium.
This shift began inside the national broadcast company, involving the producers and hosts in the brand expression. The next step was to put music back at the forefront of content and visuals, in order to impact a new generation of listeners. Studio Brussel never took itself too seriously, so channeled its diversity and spontaneity into a more conscious brand vocabulary.
Most Belgians already referred to the station as StuBru, so it felt natural to use this shorthand to steer the new identity (many didn’t even notice the name change). A glitchy custom typeface was developed to symbolize a disruptive attitude and introduce letters with a sense of rhythm. Paired with sharp imagery that used flash photography to create a “caught in the moment” look, this gave a visual voice to the music.
 
We updated the graphic layer of the website and visually clarified the navigation structure, creating an improved digital tool for audience growth. The new identity was also applied to physical environments, including the signage and mics at the StuBru studios. Its flexibility also made it perfect for announcing concerts and festivals, branding shirts for its bicycle racing team, and adorning merchandise.
The connection with youth culture firmly reestablished, Belgium’s greatest radio station was again able to rule the airwaves, represent the ideals of its listeners, and engage daily with its community as a leader in the music sector for the whole country. Mic drop.

Recapturing the edgy spirit of Belgium’s rebellious radio station

Tuned-In

Institut Français de la Mode

When two disparate Parisian schools joined to unite all areas of fashion education––creativity, technical skill, management––under one roof, Base was tasked with branding the world’s next top fashion institution. While facilitating a successful merger through the rebrand, we also brought the new IFM increased credibility and a heightened reputation that would entice future fashion talent from across the globe.
In 2019, YSL co-founder Pierre Bergé’s fashion management school IFM merged with craft-focused École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne and added a creative department, forming the sparkling new Institut Français de la Mode. This union of local Parisian institutions brought the challenge of elevating IFM’s business-only reputation to that of a credible creative college, and transforming it into an attractive global name. IFM required an identity that resonated with the designers, couturiers and business moguls of the future. Our objective was to balance the institutional with a young contemporary attitude, pushing the freshly introduced fashion design programs by bringing a creative feel across all channels. A bold and generous updated digital attitude was imperative to attract prospective students living 5,000 miles away. We also played up IFM’s prime location in Paris––an internationally renowned fashion mecca––through a bespoke serif typeface that feels quintessentially French, yet is infused with block-like dots and accents that give it a harder, more youthful edge. To make the merger successful, Base gathered teachers, students, and alumni from the two schools’ many departments for a series of workshops and interviews – to conciliate high-level institutional questions with the expectations of the youth, and underscore the need for visual and strategic unity across the institution. The outcome was a simple toolkit that could be applied and adapted by everyone at IFM, across building signage around its home at the Cité de la Mode et du Design as it expanded by 200% over three years, as well as prospectuses, website, social media, and other communications. Art direction was outlined by us, but undertaken by the students and faculty. They have great taste, after all. Fashion has a tendency to take itself too seriously. But while respecting the heritage and excellence of the school, the identity for IFM is fresh, light, elegant, and has touches of humor too. It fits, as they say, like a glove.

Merging two prestigious schools into a world-class institution

Fashion Forward

Prince Estate

The immense responsibility of safeguarding the unique artistic vision of music and cultural icon Prince was not lost on the Base team. In branding his estate, we developed a rich, digital experience to drive visibility for potential partnerships and to further engage past, present and future fans.

Prince. Prolific. Symbolic. Iconic… Need we say more? His status is cemented in the minds of generations of fans who have incredible respect for the artist, and such a deep love of the music. Prince’s untimely death caused the world to reevaluate his colossal impact on pop culture, spanning multiple eras, names, genres, and styles. And in this process, an important question arose: how do you ensure the legacy of a legend for generations to come? 
The Prince Estate, which is tasked with just that, wanted to find ways of introducing and reintroducing audiences to the late musician’s work that are as innovative and forward-thinking as he was. Educating existing and new fans of any age, but particularly younger audiences, in a way that captured Prince’s unconventional and experimental spirit was of utmost importance. 
Rather than bringing together all things Prince in a single website, we produced a series of microsites that encompass different aspects of his life and career. These ranged from an immersive annotated discography to a website exploring his early years, to a tool allowing fans to generate their own content expressing what Prince means to them.
We then released the sites one by one, in the same way that an artist drops singles or albums. This not only allowed us to digitally tailor the look, feel and interactivity of the microsites to specific themes, but build anticipation and sustain momentum around the work––something to which the music industry constantly aspires. The sites ladder up to a central hub, so the platform remains lean and easily adaptable to future technologies, trends, and an unlimited amount of upcoming content.
Receiving multiple award wins and nominations, this entirely radical approach to the preservation of a life’s work, conserving an artistic vision, and furthering engagement in Prince’s genius has ensured one thing: his legacy will live on.

Ensuring the legacy of an undefinable icon

Sign O’ the Times

Maison Dandoy

Founded in 1829, the family-owned artisanal bakery Maison Dandoy was stuck in the past. A holistic makeover encompassing packaging, digital, retail spaces, and ad campaigns brought the brand up-to-date—transforming it into a Brussels staple and looking to its future as a globally successful business.
A longtime favorite of Brusseleers and well-kept a local secret, Maison Dandoy has baked delicious treats since the early 19th century. Its signature spiced cookies, known as speculoos, are still made using the family recipe and traditional method. But these were too delicious not to be shared with the world, so what started as a modest identity redesign quickly became an ambitious project to create a full brand universe for the business. Work began by building a creative strategy. Independent research was supplemented by interviews with family members and other key stakeholders, as well as first-person customer insights, all to absorb the culture of Maison Dandoy, its habits, and its products. Once the story and vision were clearly laid out, the separate brand elements followed. The logo acts as Maison Dandoy’s visual blurb, bundling its core story into a neat and tidy graphic, while packaging is sprinkled with gold polka dots that look as if they’re fresh out of the oven. Finding the right tone of voice was also crucial for transforming the Maison Dandoy identity into a personality. The cookies became droll, cheeky characters—a bit like the court jesters of the past, which made sense for a brand that combines history and pleasure. The identity also manifested physically across several stores that act as extensions of the company’s universe and values. Seemingly floating marble countertops that display the full product offering, spherical brass lamps that mimic the gold dots, and hand-painted logos that adorn the windows—not to mention the smell of freshly baked cookies—all add to the atmosphere of warmth and delight to be enjoyed across generations. Following the rebrand, Maison Dandoy increased sales by more than 50%. The company is growing internationally year after year, now operating a store in Tokyo and distributing to luxury food purveyors Bon Marché, Galeries Lafayette, Dean &amp; DeLuca, Colette and Marks &amp; Spencer. No longer a Brussels secret, the brand and its goods can now be sampled around the world.

Shaping a beloved local bakery into an international icon

Baked to Perfection

Graanmarkt 13

The Graanmarkt 13 house in Antwerp is much more than a residence, containing a restaurant, a high-end concept store, and a rentable apartment all under one roof. After creating an identity for this unique destination, based around poetic sentences rather than a typical logo, the launch of a branded product line and online store saw us return to the project to help it spread its influence far beyond its location and become a name recognized worldwide.
In the heart of Antwerp’s historic commercial district sits a very special house, where each floor tells a different story. With a restaurant in the basement, a fashion and lifestyle store on the first floor, a gallery on the second level, and an apartment to rent on the top, the building is a haven for those in search of objects and experiences with soul and meaning. Conceived by Ilse Cornelissens and Tim Van Geloven as a place of discovery and for the good things in life, collaborating with exceptional talents like art director Bob Verhelst, architect Vincent Van Duysen, and chef Seppe Nobels to create an experience that’s always full of surprises. In the spirit of "anti-branding," the Graanmarkt 13 address was kept for the name, and a tone of voice and a story was adopted rather than a fixed logo. The identity was built around poetic sentences, written on shopping bags and product tags, which have become iconic across Antwerp and serve as collectible items among fans of the house. When Graanmarkt 13 initiated a series of products and services, the challenge for each new addition started with the same question: how to translate the atmosphere of the house into something concrete, like a perfume or a food truck? To reach customers far beyond Antwerp, the Graanmarkt 13 website was developed beyond a tool for practical information and reservations, as a place for personal stories to be told, beauty to be explored, and carefully curated products to be bought. The user-friendly shopping interface offers a distinctive online experience that mirrors visiting the house in-person. Over the years, Graanmarkt 13 has added a shoe store, a food truck, and a canteen at Antwerp fashion museum MoMU to its oeuvre. Storytelling remains a fundamental pillar of the identity, always with Graanmarkt 13 as the signature, but the tone of voice it adapted for each product. This has allowed the house to organically evolve from a destination in Antwerp, to a brand that reaches far beyond its own walls.

Brand as poetry for a multi-faceted lifestyle destination

House Proud

The New York Times: Times Talks

When The New York Times brought its award-winning journalism to a live audience, it required an identity that both conveyed the exceptional quality of the dialogues and could entice young attendees. Our visual system––easily adapted to the series’ myriad speakers and topics via a bespoke digital tool––elevated TimesTalks high above other conference series, captivated a diverse audience, and reflected the unique cultural relevance of every discussion. 

News today is consumed in so many different ways, and traditional media companies are quickly evolving in order to keep young audiences engaged. For The New York Times, one of the most trusted and revered news sources in the world, this manifested as a series of live conversations between its journalists and visionary voices in film, art, theatre, music, fashion, technology, politics and business. Think Al Gore, Ai WeiWei, Greta Gerwig, Grace Jones…
With so much digital content readily available, these in-person TimesTalks needed to encourage physical participation in important conversations of our time. And although live event series are by no means novel, most feel corporate and serious with branding that focuses on the organizers, rather than the ideas.
For TimesTalks, our approach was to give speakers and topics equal footing, via a bespoke digital tool that allowed a magnetic, animated identity to be easily adapted for hundreds of events. This tool allowed the Times’ design team to easily implement the graphic language, explore the entire range of color and type, and maintain consistency from event to event. 
A palette of 212 color combinations and 24 cuts of Franklin &amp; Cheltenham typefaces provided a flexible range of expression within a cohesive system: from serious to playful, bold to serene. The left-right arrangement of text nodded to the dynamic dialogue that TimesTalks is all about. This visual system also came alive online, where viewers could watch live talks or browse the extensive archive of past discussions.
The editorial focus better represented the diversity of discussions, and challenged the visual code of conference series. It enabled the Times to fill its seats with young viewers who were excited to take part, and set a new standard for live journalism––one that’s intelligent, sophisticated, culturally relevant, and of course, enjoyable.

Treating journalism as informative entertainment

From Page to Stage

Los Angeles Master Chorale

While exploring the many facets of the Los Angeles Master Chorale through the contemporary lens of its home city, we recognized this misunderstood art form as primal and deeply human. The resulting brand celebrates the “Voices of LA,” challenges the visual codes of chorale and classical music, and aligns with the personable vibe of Southern California. 


Although LA isn’t typically considered a birthplace of the classical performing arts, it is perhaps unexpectedly home to “the nation’s most pioneering major chorus." The Grammy-nominated Los Angeles Master Chorale, an independent and innovative professional vocal ensemble, performs classical and contemporary compositions at the famed Walt Disney Concert Hall––an icon of the city. The group shares this architectural masterpiece with the celebrated LA Philharmonic, with which it frequently performs. But the chorale desired its own identity, brand and marketing strategy that would set it apart from both the venue and its other occupant, and evolve it into an “icon” in its own right.
In collaborating with the Master Chorale, we sought to rethink the visual codes of classical music. An early insight was recognizing that singing is one of the first arts. Incredibly egalitarian, it requires no tools or instrumentation, and has a nearly transcendental effect on those who hear it, regardless of background. In our increasingly digital world, a thoroughly analog, elemental art form like choral singing is as compelling and relevant as ever.
With this in mind, we drew inspiration from the deeply personal aspects of vocal chorus to create a set of custom typefaces that reference sheet music, and as well evoke the mechanics and feeling of the human voice.
We also wanted to profoundly connect the Master Chorale with contemporary LA. Looking beyond the concert hall, we fashioned a unique voice that acts and appears deeply human, sun drenched, and as unexpected as the chorus itself.
No longer simply “the voice of the Walt Disney Concert Hall", the Master Chorale now represents the many “Voices of LA.” These resonate and reverberate far and wide thanks to a post-rebrand dramatic increase in ticket sales, memberships and donor gifts––signalling a change of tune for the chorale’s bright and sunny future.

Giving a Grammy-nominated chorus its visual voice

In Harmony

Motion

Degroof Petercam

The merger of two private banks into Degroof Petercam called for a logo that perfectly balanced those of its predecessors, to aid its future success. Through flat design and high execution, the usual tropes of banking imagery were replaced with new codes that feel in line with contemporary high-end users.
In 2015, Belgian private banks Degroof and Petercam merged into a new financial institution, which needed a contemporary brand that would shake up the traditional banking sector. The identity needed to reflect the commonalities of both original companies, preserving what made them both unique, while speaking to clients looking for expertise in contemporary finance. A symbol made from the initials of both brands places the letters in perfect harmony, and endlessly in motion, as a bold but friendly, contemporary yet established design. The logo also integrates a version of the Romain typeface, modified by trimming some serif letters into sans formats. This creates a balance between tradition and modernity that forms the core of the new identity. After creating a brand identity toolbox, we joined forces with advertising agency AIR in order to offer Degroof Petercam a 360-degree communication system for implementation and campaign development. Posters employed our contemporary symbol in a very classical way, almost like a baroque ornament, again reflecting the traditional-modern equilibrium. In today's world, a bank like Degroof Petercam has to provide its clients with an efficient yet distinctive and pleasant online experience. A big challenge was to design a UI that takes banking industry standards to a new level, while keeping usability as the top priority. A UI that works neatly, and allows for beautiful design. The identity was implemented by the Degroof Petercam team, so a digital tool was developed to provide clear and user-friendly guidelines to assist them. Hosting this tool online allowed our designers to update these guidelines easily, ensuring the Degroof Petercam team always followed the most up-to-date version. A highly successful merger was achieved through a combination of flat design and high execution, resulting in a brand that speaks the language of today’s private banking customers.

Merging two private banks into one that’s valued by all

Money Matters

Meatpacking District

NYC’s Meatpacking District is where old and new; grit and sophistication; commerce and culture all collide. Visually placing these contrasting elements side-by-side celebrates the unique creative energy that exists between them, building civic pride by embracing the neighborhood’s contradictions rather than trying to reconcile them.
The last two decades have seen warehouses, hourly hotels, and underground nightclubs become luxury retail, high-end restaurants, and world renowned-art venues in New York City’s Meatpacking District. Along the Hudson River, a formerly industrial swathe of land has transformed—but not behind some new, opaque facade. Quite the opposite, the Meatpacking District’s history bleeds into the present, creating a chic urban district with remnants of a gritty past running through its veins.
The neighborhood’s visual identity makes no attempt to reconcile these opposing elements. Instead, they sit side-by-side, honoring the tension that defines this area and capitalizing on the energy it creates. The story of the Meatpacking District is told through dichotomies. The logo is split between a bold sans-serif and an elegant serif, the website uses two columns that scroll independently, and photography by Sacha Maric captures the often dissonant architecture, spaces, activities, and people at the neighborhood’s heart. 
Informative brochures and clear maps provide a guide that presents the Meatpacking District’s chaos as magic, not madness. The website—one of the first of its kind—uses dual-column format to balance the beautiful with the more utilitarian. Users can plan their visit and peruse local attractions at the same time. The digital experience draws visitors into the heart of the community, inviting them to join community yoga, drag brunch, and bingo instead of experiencing it as an outsider passing through.
The Meatpacking District’s contrasts between day and night, culture and retail, chic and gritty are what make it unique. Branding centered on juxtaposition helps celebrate these clashing elements and support the neighborhood’s continued development. Tangibly, that means investments in the Meatpacking District are on the rise and local vacancies are low. But beyond that, impact can be measured through feeling—civic pride is at an all time high as the neighborhood embraces all of the contradictions that make it so beautiful.

Instilling civic pride in a neighborhood of contrasts and contradictions

Perfect Dissonance

MoMA: Design Store

When design e-commerce sites emerged with curated offerings of world-class items, MoMA Design Store needed to regain its competitive edge in this field. By leveraging its ties to the prestigious museum, and the idea of "shopping the unshoppable" works of priceless art, we brought to light many of the stories behind the objects––which both highlighted the store’s credibility and added value to the customer experience. 
Ten years after branding the MoMA Design Store in Soho, the Museum of Modern Art's retail division called on us again to communicate the evolution of its shops. With competition from established European brands opening retail spaces in NYC and the rise of several e-commerce startups with similar offerings, the store needed to redefine how it spoke to consumers across digital, print, and physical channels.
One thing MoMA Design Store had that its competitors did not was the credibility of the museum. Aligning the two closely, the concept of "shopping the unshoppable" emerged as a method of treating the objects for sale like collectible artifacts. This entailed highlighting historical facts, designers, or technology; celebrating the concept behind the designs; articulating their relevance; or identifying direct connections with the museum itself.
The strategic pillars––which we create for every client––devised for MoMA Design Store included "authority/expert", "forward thinking", "new/relevant", "exclusivity". These were used as filters for the messaging, ensuring that the stories told about each design item followed the same level of detail and historical accuracy as the museum itself.
The core ingredients of the store’s visual identity were reimagined in new and surprising ways through color and art direction, creating a thoughtful yet inquisitive personality, and a dynamic, vital, and witty tone of voice. Products were carefully segmented to target specific audiences, and promotions written in the first person garnered higher engagement.
The remixed identity enlivened the store environment, catalogs and website, holistically helping to educate customers and improve their shopping experience by delivering meaningful information. This allowed MoMA Design Store to retain its kudos as the place to shop collectible design.

Enticing customers to shop the unshoppable

Shop MoMA

Terminal 4 at JFK

A favored airline hub, a desirable business location, and an enjoyable passenger destination – T4 at JFK has to tick many boxes. By unconventionally treating the airport terminal as a brand, Base was able to encompass all of the above, while enlivening its concourses with humor, whimsy and joy to create a travel experience that’s memorable for all the right reasons. 

Let’s face it, no one wants to spend time in an airport. But despite being the largest terminal both at New York’s John F. Kennedy International and in the United States, T4 is far from an impersonal, overwhelming and frustrating travel hub. Instead it’s a place of warmth, humanity and humor. This subversion has broken all conventions of bland and neutral American airports, and changed the vernacular of aviation––as a destination that passengers, retailers and airlines actually want to find or locate themselves in.
Airport terminals are not typically branded, so the initial decision to give T4 a distinct personality was bold. The T4 team realized that by applying a brand, they could conjure positive emotions in visitors during their departures and arrivals processes. This lured businesses that saw benefits of operating in a terminal that travellers, and therefore customers, preferred. 
In developing T4’s personality, we looked to its team’s customer service mantra, “Don’t worry, be happy,” as a starting point. With this duality in mind, we created a visual identity designed to “Guide and Delight” passengers through more than a mile of jet bridges, corridors, and concourses. These spaces became a canvas for supersized environmental graphics that provide a constant reminder of the warm and generous ethos behind the brand. The illustrations draw on the best of New York City, representing its people, places and culture on an international stage.
A custom typeface, which is now instantly recognizable, was also developed for T4––applied across signage to help travelers navigate the vast terminal, and splashed boldly onto the walls to spell out famous quotes about the benefits of travel. Evocative of tarmac runways and airplane jet streams, the type appears friendly and not too corporate, while the messaging tone is friendly, fun, and builds excitement for those preparing to fly.
The overall result is a terminal experience that has become a pleasant, rather than dreaded, part of traveling for all. Even after several years, the “Welcome to NYC” sign that greets arrivals still puts a smile on the faces of visitors and residents alike. It’s hard to think of another airport that has the same positive effect.

Forever changing the tropes of the aviation industry

High Flying

Museum of Sex

The Museum of Sex welcomes people from every culture who seek a deeper understanding of sexuality. A bold and brazen identity helps the museum to explore the frontier of the sexual landscape through the creation, curation, and presentation of ideas and experiences, not to mention campaigns that turn heads and start conversations across NYC. 


Even in the 21st century, the word “sex” and references to sexual content still carry stigma. So when tasked with branding a museum previously known as MoSEX, the challenge was to deemphasize the negative connotations associated with the subject, while not shying away from all of its wild and wonderful facets, all while encouraging public enlightenment, discourse, and engagement.
Repositioned as The Museum of Sex, the New York City institution then needed a personality and visual identity that represented the importance its exhibitions, publications and programs––which bring the best of current scholarship on sex and sexuality to the widest possible audience.
Balancing the need to build an institutional brand with communicating the depth and variety of the programming was a core concern. The museum had to embrace its position as a creative breeding ground––diverse, always exploring, pushing, and changing––while remaining clearly recognizable through an iconic and consistent communication system.
Our solution was radically simple. By using the institution’s name as a container, sandwiching visuals between the lines of bold text, we were able to create a powerful dialogue between type and any image. This led to the reimagining of the advertising program, using this system not only to announce happenings at the museum, but examine and critique the cultural, social, political and economic issues that affect us all through the context of sex.
The Museum of Sex also engages in an array of projects with and beyond the walls of the institution. These include touring sexual carnivals, custom sexual personality tests, art commission programs, and product development to name but a few. Given this broad and diverse output, flexibility of the identity across a range of applications from products to advertising was critical.
On billboards, buses or the subway, the museum’s brazen posters immediately draw the eye––first to the large, loud type; then to the evocative, imaginative, suggestive visuals it frames. The identity demands attention, and starts conversations around “sex” and how the subject is viewed by society.

Destigmatizing sexuality to expand our understanding of the world

Sex Life

NeueHouse

NeueHouse is much more a creative hub than it is a transactional workspace, appealing to a network of members who form a “community for the curious.” Branding, interior design and programming all coalesce within its walls, resulting in a culture that fosters ideas, innovation, and inspiration for everyone who visits. 


NeueHouse, the world’s first private workspace collective, was conceived as a place to create, collaborate, socialize, and decompress. Its thriving community of creatives view it not just as somewhere to send emails and take meetings, but as a network of like-minded individuals and companies that inspire each other and innovate together. Along with a substantial programming creates a culture
Since its inception, NeueHouse has collaborated with Base to frame its mission and reflect these core ideas within its visual identity. By presenting NeueHouse as a state of mind rather than a physical place, we enabled the team to communicate their ideas and values to the world instead of simply describing the product. The goal from the outset was to also enhance the experience for members and visitors to the space, and make them smile at every opportunity (which is always our mission at Base).
The branding needed to reflect the cumulative kudos of the NeueHouse community, so we designed an identity that would best represent, resonate with, and continually surprise its constituents. Rather than consistently deploying a logo across every application, we tailored a concept for each. Creating a personality through the visual system also enabled us to frame the content generated within the space, using elements like a magnetic signage system, a recognizable grid, and an iconic monogram as a guide.
This system also includes flexible templates that can be easily adapted by the NeueHouse design team for the varied materials they produce. Colorful, iconic margins translate well to both print and digital, while the first iteration of the website–intentionally designed to be playfully cryptic––utilized tiling to capture the multifaceted, creative nature of NeueHouse.
NeueHouse now has locations in New York and Los Angeles, with more on the horizon. The adaptable identity we created allows the teams to customize for the needs and styles of specific outposts while clearly remaining part of the same visual family. Its members consider these spaces and their network as family, too, and our identity reminds them that whenever they’re at NeueHouse, they’re at home, and in an ideal environment to work at their creative best.

Inspiring a community of creative entrepreneurs

Co-working Coterie

Fleur du Mal

Love’s pleasures and pains formed the founding concept for lingerie line Fleur du Mal, bringing substance to a market that was centered solely on style. These dualities informed a poetic brand, rooted by a thorny logo that appears both strong and fragile, and adored by today’s biggest celebrities.

Named after French poet Baudelaire’s book Les Fleurs du Mal, the lingerie brand founded and designed by Jennifer Zuccarini is built around ideas of the complexities of love: passion and desire, yet longing and hurt. “The Evil Flowers,” as the title translates, perfectly captured this duality, and drove the concept for an identity that delicately balanced these elements. 
This birthed an “F” monogram based on razor-sharp rose thorns, which appears at once structurally classic and strong, yet fragile and beautiful. Adding the tagline “Love Hurts,” the brand gained an aura that felt sensual yet sexy, elegant yet provocative, edgy yet chic, and playful yet timeless. 
The theme of poetry was echoed in the brand voice, which comprised single words or clever compositions to create an air of mystery and sophistication. Along with the monogram, this was applied to minimalist packaging, from shopping bags to boxes. For the brand's store opening event, VIP invitations also emblazoned with the new identity were wrapped around bouquets of 40 red roses.
Eschewing the glossy, high-production look of many lingerie brands at the time, the art direction for Fleur du Mal was much more raw and ​​avant-garde, creating a friction between the artistic and the commercial. The photography also formed shoppable vignettes on the website––a ground-breaking fusion of art and commerce, which contextualized the merchandise within an intimate environment designed to inspire discovery and cultivate desire.
Today, Fleur du Mal has firmly established itself in the market of ready-to-wear lingerie, and is a favorite of the world’s biggest supermodels, singers, actors and influencers. Miley Cyrus, Megan Thee Stallion, and Anya Taylor Joy are all recent #FleurGirls. The brand has opened an LA sister location to its original store in NYC, expanded into swimwear, and become a household name––all while retaining its sharp edge.

Preparing an edgy lingerie brand to bloom beautifully

Coming up Roses

MoMA: QNS

In 2000, the Museum of Modern Art made the bold decision to tear down and rebuild its 53rd Street home. In the interim, a $35 million renovation of a Swingline Staples factory would act as the Museum’s temporary location. The impermanence of the move served to re-energize the MoMA brand, and the new venue acted as a lab for experimentation for its identity, campaigns, and graphic systems. 


New York’s Museum of Modern Art temporarily moved across the East River to Long Island City years before the neighborhood was considered an arts destination, when Manhattanites rarely ventured to the outer boroughs. Working with the museum’s exciting programming, and the innovative architecture of Michael Maltzan, the challenge was to entice culture-seekers over to the renovated Swingline Staples factory during its three-year stay.
To convey that the museum had relocated to Queens, we built a visual world around the concept of movement. Notions of travel were prevalent in both the naming and art direction. Three-letter airport codes informed the QNS moniker, and all campaign imagery portrayed figures moving left to right––directionally the same on a map as the journey from Manhattan to Queens.
Simple gestures like arrows that signal direction and motion were used to orient visitors, while dotted lines separating information indicated temporality. A set of custom pictograms clearly explained the different options for transportation to the museum. All of these elements were designed to be a complement to the existing MoMA identity, which successfully guided visitors to the museum, and––thanks to a seamless integration with signage and architecture––then helped them to navigate it.
MoMA QNS opened June 2002 in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when the world was still reeling, air travel was limited, and NYC was the last place that tourists wanted to visit. Attendance at all of the city’s cultural institutions plummeted, except for MoMA, which was the only one to exceed projected visitor numbers.
Our identity not only drew crowds to Queens, but brought a new energy to the institution, which might not have come to fruition without the move. What started as an overhaul of its building turned into a welcome refresh for the museum as a brand.

Moving MoMA to a temporary location and forward as a brand

Destination Queens

Milk

Way ahead of its time, MILK understood that community is key, and carefully fostered its own that encapsulated the effortless cool of Downtown NYC. Over the course of our 20-year collaboration, we’ve captured and reflected this creativity, culture and attitude through the brand as it has grown, diversified, and continued to redefine fashion content creation. 


From its beginnings as a photography studio in 1998, MILK has spent the past two decades building a fashion empire and content-based creative company, as well as a following that would be the envy of many brands today. Headquartered in New York City, MILK came to epitomize the Downtown creative scene while empowering the industry’s most visionary talent and innovators. Base has been part of this evolution from the outset, working with the MILK team to consistently highlight their core values of creativity, culture, and hospitality.
From day one, the overarching objective was to create an incredibly iconic identity with a logo that functioned more as a symbol than as a word. In early applications, it took on a translucent quality––a reference to light and photography––before serving as a foundation for multiple adaptations. 
The MILK ad campaigns were always about the creative content that was produced there, never the space or services. For the locations, our goal was to appeal to the location teams, a community with a very different vibe than the refined world of fashion. Here, we heavily referenced street, tattoos, and heavy metal.
As the company expanded its offering, we created unique visual identities for the various services that always tied back to the original. For MILK DGTL, a platform for film and print production, this meant playing with codes from the world of fashion and the tech startup industry. The MILK Gallery logo is animated to evoke the building’s row of iconic, pivoting glass doors, while for multimedia content team LEGS, we developed a modular logo as creative as the studio itself.
In 2010 we also completed the concept, branding, and creative direction for MILK Made––an online editorial platform that showcases emerging talents in fashion, music, art, photography and film. MILK Made’s raw, imperfect, ever-changing logo embodies the constant evolution of these creative disciplines, and the overall identity reflects the dynamism and edginess of the content published. This has since evolved into the MILK.xyz website and has become standard for popular culture and the arts.
MILK has been successful in each of its disparate endeavors because it developed a clearly defined–and then never compromised–its community, culture, personality and attitude. This in turn has created a pure brand synonymous with cutting-edge creativity that the next generation of MILK acolytes can appropriate and grow.

Creating an iconic, ever-evolving anti-brand

NYC Cool

But under the direction of Peter de Caluwe, La Monnaie (a.k.a. De Munt) in Brussels has approached opera as a contemporary genre that bridges the past and present. For the 2019-20 season, in line with a new seasonal structure that shifted from thematics to an “architecture” centered on creativity,…

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