Aqua's new corporate identity had to be a well thought out
process; it needed time and unrivalled concentration. It needed
Aqua's brains trust. It needed the two rams of creativity and
business bashing ideas like skulls until the impressive idea was
born. We all knew that this couldn't have happened at the office,
or in Johannesburg for that matter, so off to Magaliesberg we went.
Isolation in collaboration was a half-truth; we wanted to be far
away and in touch with anything but the hustle and bustle of the
city, buzzing phones and the ding of incoming emails.
Collaborating in luxury
Robyn Nahman, Wunderman's creative director, pretty
much summed it up when asked about the weekend, "It was pretty hard
work and very intense, but when so wrapped in luxury, having every
desire (well, almost) catered to… hard work is easy." And
picturesque, I might add. The five-star accommodations, spa baths,
beautiful gardens and silence made for the perfect location to get
to the crunch of where we wanted our new look Aqua and its strategy
to go. We rekindled our reason for working at Aqua in the first
place, by finding creative ways to express creative people.
I like the Zen of that circle
According to Dane Bowen, Aldo Pullela and Adam Brandt (the
creatives behind the new look), getting to the meat of CI, the idea
and the process, the thought behind the design had to be immense.
Adam makes it simple to understand:
To create the new approach, we needed to achieve a
simplification of everything. To evolve our CI to encompass
the new ethos, we wanted to indulge water and 'Zen-ify' the art
direction. As it happens, the guys and I feel that we now own the
full stop, as we search for the point in everything.
Challenges
Adam claims the biggest challenge was getting all the Aqua
brains on the same page. Dane, our creative politician, describes
the biggest challenge as creating a new look that had appeal
straight from the corporate client right through to the mo-hawked
student looking to get that internship.
The new look promises to produce thoughts and opinions from a
whole host of people, or at least we hope so… let us know your
thoughts in the comments section below.