2016 Winners & Shortlists

Brief Explanation

Bahrain hosts an annual shopping and entertainment festival, which was first organised by Tamkeen in 2014. Tamkeen is one of the cornerstones of Bahrain’s national reform initiatives and Bahrain’s Economic Vision. Tamkeen is tasked with developing Bahrain’s private sector and positioning it as the key driver of economic development. Tamkeen’s idea behind the shopping festival is to promote economic growth by transforming the Island into a shopping and entertainment destination over the duration of one month. The primary target audience are the residents (citizens & expatriates), and the secondary target were visitors from the neighbouring Saudi Arabia. Besides temporary stalls and bazaars, the festival included participation from various outlets and merchants, including large malls, individual retail outlets, restaurants, stores in souk, and more.

The Brief

For the 2nd edition of the shopping festival, Tamkeen requested the agency to design a logo that is flexible and free from cultural influences - a logo that can go international without questioning to its identity. Visually, a universal embodiment of the activity of shopping was requested supported by a festival name that is self-explanatory and compliments the brand design.

How the final design was conceived

Although primarily a shopping festival, the event needed to communicate more. Upon analysing the brief, we determined that the best approach was to incorporate a timeline to our concept, to include the experience and bring the audience to the brand. In order to capture the essence of Bahrain, we needed to reflect the multicultural aspect, bringing different colour palettes, to create a timeless shape, based on geometry, where it told a story, with a beginning and an end. To represent the festival timings, which ran from 10am to 10pm everyday, the warm colours ascended to a circle segment representing the sun, and the calmer colours descended into a circle segment representing the moon. The colours were woven together to form a vertical and imposing graphic structure of a shopping bag. Design innovation was applied in creating a brand that is flexible in any medium, from the biggest building to an Instagram post. We achieved this by creating “Brand Blocks”, where any information can be displayed with the best contrast while maintaining the composing blocks of the brand, without losing identity or readability.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

The final result was a brand image that reflected not only the shopping experience, but also its multicultural side, with a great brilliance and recognition from the public. The target group very well understood it as everyone could instantly connect the “Brand Blocks” to the main identity. This helped in effectively communicating to the shoppers that they were in the presence of either a partner or an event, which was a part of Shop Bahrain. The Day to Night concept was also well received and influenced the shoppers by adding more colours to the day and brightness to the nights. We created a brand that achieved a 30% increase in sales and established itself as the image of Shop Bahrain, considering that this is only the 2nd edition.