In 2024 we undertook a comprehensive photo shoot at Gatwick Airport with Priority Pass.
A year later we’re delighted to see the results of that shoot being used by Priority Pass at Incheon Airport in Seoul, South Korea, the number one spot for international traffic in Northeast Asia, and one of the world’s busiest airports.
Watching the Olympics opening ceremony in Paris reminded us of our special invitation to the attend the dress rehearsal for the London Olympics ceremony in Stratford 12 years ago.
As a lead creative agency in the ten years leading up to the games, we were privileged to sit in a full stadium whilst the participants went through their final, meticulously planned routines.
And when Danny Boyle asked the audience to refrain from sharing any of the unfolding spectacular on social media until after the actual event, the audience ‘signed’ the virtual NDA with rapturous applause!
It’s always great to see a brand come to life especially when it’s for something a momentus as the Olympic Games.
We were delighted to see that Priority Pass are the Official Airport Lounge Partner for the Hong Kong, China Delegation to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
As the Official Airport Lounge Partner, athletes of SF&OC National Sports Associations will be provided with Priority Pass digital memberships with four complimentary airport lounge and travel experiences visits.
We are currently working with an exciting new professional services client here at Kino. We’re refreshing their existing identity and updating their website to elevate the brand – giving the company the level of sophistication and professionalism that it deserves. Watch this space for updates.
We’ve been working closely with Priority Pass over the past few years to refresh their brand. Having updated the logo and brand guidelines, we were tasked with updating brand imagery.
We therefore undertook a two-day shoot at Gatwick airport across three lounges – to capture the benefits of a Priority Pass membership and to help connect the dots between an airport lounge and the experiences customers could have by joining Priority Pass.
We worked with an amazing team of models, photographers, stylists and make up artists who helped create a series of inspiring and inviting images to promote Priority Pass and their lounges worldwide.
We’re looking forward to seeing the images being rolled out across the brand soon.
Priority Pass is the original and market-leading airport experiences programme.
Our journey with Priority Pass started pre-Covid and after working with them on a number of projects, we’re excited to share their brand refresh.
Our role was to update their identity, making it more suitable for digital use as well as bringing consistency to the design of the brand guidelines. We also created a robust brand framework and brand strategy.
Around the world, their brand makes travellers feel confident, calm and special by opening up the experiences that help make each airport journey seamless, pleasurable and stress-free.
It’s a brief, but fascinating insight into Elvis’ life from his childhood through to the Vegas years with an array of bejewelled jumpsuits, finishing with huge screens that give the impression of standing alongside ‘The King’ on stage.
From a design point of view, the range of typography on display is an eclectic mix that changes from the serif italics of the fifties through to the dot matrix of the late sixties and then the cold simplicity of the sans serif in the seventies almost reflecting the effervescent early years through to the bloated monotony of concerts in Elvis’ final years.
To buy tickets for the exhibition visit: elvislondonbridge.co.uk
We’ve recently completed the brand identity for the TideMill Group.
TideMill offers visionary products and services to customers who are interested in economics, investments and financial decision making. Their mission is to educate and change the way people think about complex issues.
The brand name and identity needed to be professional, inclusive and approachable. TideMill symbolises movement, strength, structure, process and positive results.
We’re recently been working with Informa on an internal campaign highlighting cyber security awareness.
Dark portraits overlayed with bold and intriguing ‘They know…’ messaging help educate employees with a series of stark warnings that are designed to make you stop and think.
The messaging sits alongside a number of security rules and Informa’s own stats that help bring the reality of cyber security to life. This internal campaign, was delivered globally on Informa’s intranet system, and throughout their offices.
We’ve recently been putting the finishing touches to the brand identity we created for Parakeet Games.
Based in the US, Parakeet Games markets educational video games, including a family of games targeted to subscribers interested in finance and economics.
With a wide-ranging audience from school children to professionals, the brand name and identity needed to have integrity, patience and a sense of humour.
The Investment Company Showcase is a new event from the AIC. This one-day conference presents some of the top investment speakers in the country.
We created the identity, along with all the marketing assets, from advertising through to event graphics.
Attendees heard from leading investment company fund managers on topics such as inflation, private equity, emerging markets and going green, among many more. Three separate conference rooms allowed the flexibility to pick and choose the sessions of most relevance to future investment plans.
We’ve recently completed a brochure for the AIC that details the importance of investment companies.
Investment companies have been serving investors for over 150 years. Their fixed capital structure enables active managers to deliver growth and income across a wide range of geographies and asset classes – from listed shares to property and infrastructure, from green energy to biotech – while their stock market listing makes them accessible to everyone.
We used bold and dramatic typography to help highlight key messages and drive investment in these attractive closed end funds.
Continuing the wildlife theme, this year’s VCT (Venture Capital Trusts) report focuses on the under-sea ecosystem and particularly how there are similarities between the complexity and diversity of coral reefs and the small business sector.
Working on these reports is always huge fun and it’s a great way of finding out more about a subject that you may know little about.
A clownfish helps tell the story and weaves in and out of the pages, helping to convey an investor’s journey.
We’ve always loved getting involved with charities and were delighted when we were chosen to create the identity for The University Design Forum.
The Forum is an independent organisation which exists to promote high quality design in university campuses, buildings and facilities, in the knowledge that this enhances teaching, learning, research and public engagement.
Along with the logo, we provided brand guidelines and visual assets to help bring the brand to life.
2022 marks 10 years since the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games came to London.
The games set a new standard in global multi-sport events and became the blueprint for all future Olympic Games.
Having created the bid logo in 2005 we were then engaged to work with the teams at LOCOG and the ODA for the next seven years – all the way up until Gamestime. We created a vast range of collateral – from stakeholder communication programmes, ticketing marketing, right through to spectator guides for each of the 60 sports, going to every one of the 11 million lucky ticket holders!
It was a truly fantastic time and are very proud to have played our part in bringing the memorable Games to life.
TwentyFour Asset Management asked us to create a campaign for their Sustainable Fund Range.
Through the use of a simple tick, we created a bold animations that enabled TwentyFour Asset Management to stand-out in online media.
A cross animating into a simple tick signifies the impact that can be made by rewarding issuers who do the right thing.
We were recently asked to refresh the AIC’s Guide to Investment Companies website.
The update needed to distil the microsite’s information and content into easily accessible, digestible sections. Site navigation and user journey was simplified and wayfinding improved to ensure a straightforward and clear user experience.
Bold and bright imagery was used to introduce the sections and highlight key information. Overall the site engages new investors in an approachable and unintimidating way.
Its been an absolute pleasure to have worked on the naming and identity for MyHelpa.
MyHelpa is a new business in the care sector that allows care providers and their clients achieve better, safer and more responsive home care by ‘connecting care’.
A clever and easy to use app will help improve communications, save money and above all, ensure that the focus stays on what actually matters – providing the best care for each
and every client.
MyHelpa’s purpose is to reduce anxiety for clients’ families by providing detailed information about carers and their required tasks and outcomes.
The brand name and identity needed to be friendly, approachable, and appeal to a broad audience within the care sector.
Visitors to Kino will have no doubt noticed our love for the work of the late special effects pioneer and animator, Ray Harryhausen – in fact a vintage poster for his film, ‘It Came From Beneath The Sea’ takes pride of place in one of our toilets!
Kino’s Dave took a trip to Edinburgh to visit a new exhibition, ‘Ray Harryhausen | Titan of Cinema’ which charts the career of the effects guru from childhood up to his films of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s.
The exhibition allows visitors to get up close and personal to some familiar characters who appeared huge on screen, but are in reality only a few centimeteres high.
‘Ray Harryhausen | Titan of Cinema’ which is on at the National Galleries of Scotland runs until February 2022.‘
We’ve been busy working on this year’s VCT report for the AIC.
Focusing on the theme of ‘Eager Beavers’ the report details the similarities between VCT (Venture Capital Trusts) and the recent and successful rewilding of beavers back into the British countryside.
As the report states, ‘Like the busy European beaver, active on the riverbank, VCTs are making small but potentially significant interventions in the UK’s economic life.
VCTs are already helping create a more resilient and responsive economy. Hopefully, in the not too distant future, more of us strolling down a quiet riverbank will be able to catch sight of an eager beaver doing its bit to transform the British countryside for the better’.
We’re no strangers to a team night out here at Kino but due to obvious reasons over the past year or so, they’ve been few and far between.
To get back into the swing of things, we got together with the East London Wine School for an online tasting.
The theme of the evening was ‘Something different’, which meant an unusual selection of wines from around the world. Sam, our host, talked us through the wines’ background, regions and grape varieties – we even got a back-to-basics lesson on how to taste and why that second ‘nose’ makes all the difference.
Favourite of the evening was the Gewürztraminer from Dopff & Irion in Alsace – we’d recommend grabbing a bottle or two!
Despite it’s galleries still being closed when the non-essential retail restrictions lifted on 12 April, the Design Museum took advantage and launched it’s very own pop-up supermarket.
Curated by Camille Walala, the shop is selling a limited-edition range of everyday products from kidney beans to toilet roll – all for the same price as your usual shop.
Each product is designed by one of ten young artists including Charlotte Edey, Holly Warburton, Isadora Lima, Jess Warby, Joey Yu, Katherine Plumb, Katie Kimmel, Kentaro Okawara, and Michaela Yearwood-Dan.
We jumped at the chance to support the Design Museum and ordered some essentials online – a toilet roll, a bottle of gin and some tonic. What more does one need?
For nearly 25 years we’ve been working with Aberdeen Standard Investment Trusts producing their newsletter, The Bulletin.
Starting life as a modest newsletter, the Investment Trust annual magazine has chronicled the challenges, opportunities and changes faced by investment trust investors for more than a quarter of a century.
Created to help self-directed investors to make better informed decisions, there has also been a strong focus on reporting what’s happening in the global economy and what that might mean for investment portfolios.
We’re proud to say that The Bulletin now has a readership base of over 100,000.
Aberdeen Standard Asia Focus PLC was launched 1995 to harness its management team’s deep insight into the dynamic smaller company opportunities emerging throughout the Asia-Pacific region.
To celebrate twenty-five years of the trust we designed a booklet to help showcase the transformation across the Asia-Pacific region – and the investment opportunities ahead for Asia’s smaller companies.
Recently we’ve been helping the AIC with their Channel Island Conference 2020. The event usually requires a considerable amount of printed material and graphics, however this year due to Covid-19, the event has moved online.
We developed a central graphic symbolising positive direction through an ever changing landscape.
Using online platform ‘ON24’, the event gave the audience of financial advisers the option to customise their interface, as well as pose questions and download the relevant background and reading material – all from the comfort of their own homes.
One of Kino Design’s founders, Andy Stanfield, has recently returned from a photography workshop in Vietnam. He’s always had an interest in photography, Steve McCurry and Bruce Davidson are particular favourites, and decided to spend time trying to learn the actual craft himself. In November he took part in a workshop organised by ace photographer Anthony Epes, it was based in Hanoi and around Ha Giang in the north of Vietnam.
“It was an amazing experience”, says Andy. “It was very insightful, learning about light, composition and trying to relate to your subject. All will have an influence on my work at Kino. And, of course, Vietnam is an incredible country, it’s landscapes, food and above all its wonderful people. Being part of the photography workshop helped me see a side of Vietnam I would have otherwise missed, I will definitely be returning.”
We’re excited to announce The Jockey Club as one of our latest clients.
Over the next few months we’ll be working with them to develop key brand assets and guidelines, ensuring clarity and consistency across a diverse range of communications.
We’re looking forward to working with such a historic and passionate brand. Our aim – to provide them with the tools they need to engage and inspire new and loyal audiences.
Watch this space to find out more.
We spent an evening soaking up the sights and sounds of late 60’s Hollywood with a trip to The Barbican to see Quentin Tarantino’s latest film, ‘Once Upon A Time in Hollywood.’
Known for his obsessive detail, Tarantino manages to perfectly capture the faded glamour of the period and it’s great to see that detail extend into the marketing for the film.
Tarantino commissioned comic book artist Martin Duhovic, legendary film poster artists Steven Chornery (best known for his poster for 1986’s Labyrinth) and Renato Casaro (Conan the Barbarian, Octopussy, and Rambo: First Blood Part II) to create a set of posters of DiCaprio in character as Dalton.
Stylish and atmospheric, the posters cleverly pastiche and play homage to movies that hark of a bygone era.
The Aberdeen Standard Investments Scottish Open headed to The Renaissance Club in North Berwick this year, for the 37th staging of the event.
Many of the world’s best golfers, including Rickie Fowler, Matt Kuchar, Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas, all descend on Scotland looking to end the week crowned ASI Scottish Open champion.
Bernd Wiesberger eventually won the title to secure a sixth European Tour title after beating Benjamin Hebert in a nail-biting play-off.
The strong and successful branding of events such as the Scottish Open is seen as key to building the global prominence of Aberdeen Standard Investments.
Aberdeen Asset Management have always liked to stand out in a crowded market place and the latest multi-asset campaign we created for their Asian market helps them do just that.
With a range of funds that are ‘Truly diverse – Genuinely different’, we created a campaign featuring a multitude of butterflies. The creative was showcased across transport throughout Singapore and was met with great feedback.
Aberdeen Asset Management love getting to grips with how the different companies they invest in operate. Meeting companies face-to-face means fund managers ensure any company they invest in aspires to best practice in every aspect of its activities. With that in mind we created a concept for their latest equities campaign that showcases how Aberdeen fund managers always insist on first-hand research and are happy to walk the shop floor when looking for companies to invest in.
We were recently asked by Aberdeen to create another informative booklet to sit alongside their range of award-winning guides and animations. This one is called ‘Home truths of property investing’. Celebrating Aberdeen’s 30 years in property markets, the guide gives advice to investors through a number of ‘home truths’.
The guide teaches that when investing in the property markets, you can learn the importance of informed, independent thought and that doing the research and acquiring the right knowledge sometimes allows you to go against conventional wisdom.
Aberdeen Asset Management are the Official Performance Partner of Landrover BAR (Ben Ainslie Racing) – a commercial sporting team with a number of individual private investors alongside corporate partners. The team is made up of some of the best British and international sailors, designers, builders and racing support.
We have been helping Aberdeen to create a number of pieces of sponsorship material and key collateral.
When a font as ubiquitous as Helvetica gets a facelift we take note. Originally created by Swiss designer Max Miedinger in 1957, Helvetica has just been updated by Monotype. The new font, Helvetica Now, has been re-designed for the digital age (about time, some might say), with three versions available – Display, Text and Micro. Helvetica Now Micro has been specifically created for its legibility on mobile devices.
Helvetica has been used by countless brands and signage systems, including First Direct, Panasonic, North Face, Jeep, Lufthansa and the New York subway system. To find out more about Helvetica there is a wonderful documentary about the font by Gary Hustwit which is available on Netflix.
We were fortunate to be invited to Stamford Bridge on Sunday to watch Chelsea vs Wolves. It was great to see the brand we have been working with come to life on a match day – from the supporters wearing the kit through to new signage implemented throughout the stadium.
Our seats were great – exactly on the half way line. With Chelsea trying to claim a top-four finish the atmosphere was tense. Wolves played well and scored early in the second half. Luckily for Chelsea, Eden Hazard equalised in the second minute of injury time to get Chelsea a point – everyone was on their feet. It was brilliant to see the team in action after seeing them so regularly on our computer screens over the past year.
Thanks to the team at Chelsea for a wonderful afternoon.
With property developments popping up everywhere it has been great to see our recent work with Aberdeen Standard Investments Real Estate come to life nearby the studio.
Having completed the Aberdeen Standard Investments masterbrand guidelines, Kino were asked to develop guidelines for the Real Estate division of the business.
The guidelines needed to address the functionality of a number of endorsements and how these could be applied across multiple channels.
Michael English and Nigel Waymouth formed the wonderfully named Hapshash and the Coloured Coat artist collective in the 1960s to produce posters for the UFO Club in London. The club was home to early shows by Pink Floyd. Their designs brought an explosive vitality to the fly posters on London streets, they used gold and silver inks, super bright colours, fluid typography and beautiful illustration.
You can claim your own piece of this history – as we recently have for our studio – by getting down to the Bamalama poster shop on Leather Lane market where they have limited runs of a number of these posters.
We’ve been working with the Association of Investment Companies on their latest campaign to create awareness around the importance of saving for children.
To encourage parents to discover the benefits of saving for their children’s future each enquiry to the association was rewarded with a unique piggy bank (called Penny, naturally). To accompany Penny were a set of stickers to decorate her, chocolate coins to pop in and, crucially, educational information for parents on investing for their children.
We have recently been working with Chelsea Football Club, creating brand guidelines and implementing their look and feel across both print and digital marketing communications.
Their crest is a highly recognisable symbol. Less known is what sits behind it – the qualities and characteristics that make them different to any other football club or brand.
As a result, we have found ourselves tweaking, refining and crafting assets that make up the brand identity, and providing users with a complete and in-depth overview of the Chelsea Football Club brand.
Recent research has found that despite 70% of graphic design students in the UK being women, only 11% made it to creative director level.
Kerning The Gap is a collective of like-minded people who want to see more women in design leadership roles, hear their voices and be inspired to create change. By shedding light on the issues women face in the industry they hope to encourage design businesses across the UK to channel gender equality in the workplace.
One way the group do this is by running an annual mentor programme which Kino is currently taking part in. We really recommend the Kerning the Gap podcasts – a selection of focussed and inspirational discussions filled with insights and tips – and not just for women.
This is what happens when you take a Roy Lichtenstein painting and reimagine it with Lego. Members of the studio have been busy with the little coloured bricks and created their own piece of Pop Art history.
For inspiration they took Lichtenstein’s painting, Ohhh…Alright…, once owned by the actor Steve Martin and sold at auction in 2005 for £26 million. Our version is a little cheaper and uses over 3,000 bricks and measures 120x120cm. Feel free to come and see it in our studio, it is currently taking pride of place at the top of our spiral staircase.
For leading wealth managers James Hay Partnership, reinforcing relationships with over 58,000 individual clients who trust them with more than £26 billion worth of pension and investment savings is critical.
To help encourage this loyalty we developed an internal campaign that literally puts James Hay employees in their investors’ shoes.
Through a series of installations based on investor profiles placed throughout their offices we helped ensure that staff could empathise with clients to encourage their trust for the long-term.
We stepped outside at lunchtime to watch 100 RAF planes fly over London in a historic display to mark the Royal Air Force’s 100th birthday celebrations
An estimated 70,000 people lined the streets of London to watch the spectacular display.
It was 100 years ago on 1 April, 1918 that the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service merged to create the RAF – the world’s first independent air service.
For 150 years, investment companies have adapted to the world around them with one simple vision: to help investors meet their financial needs.
To celebrate this anniversary we were asked by the Association of Investment Companies to create a logo that could work alongside their own identity, as well as help promote their involvement in – and endorsement of – this remarkable celebration.
People often ask how we decided on Kino as our name. Although it translates into cinema in most east European countries we actually chose the name because of where those countries took the word from. Kino derives from the word kinetics in Greek and we liked the idea that kinetics is about setting things in motion. This is what we thought our agency is all about – kick starting projects of shapes and sizes.
Obviously whenever we are in Europe we get a photo opportunity with our name. This photo is from the wonderful Museum of Neon in Warsaw that Suzanne Buckle, our Design Director, recently visited.
When Aberdeen Asset Management and Standard Life Investments merged they became the largest active manager in the UK and second largest in Europe.
Offering ‘truly global asset management’, we created a typographic and message driven campaign providing audiences with headlines highlighting the benefits of their joint offer.
A couple of us went to see the new stage adaption of Network at the National Theatre, based on the Oscar-winning movie from 1976.
Featuring Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), Network tells the story of a US news anchor on the edge of a breakdown who tells his TV audience, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” But when the ratings go through the roof, the network seize on their new-found prophet, and he becomes the biggest thing on television.
It is an intense and immersive multimedia production where it is possible to eat at the ‘onstage’ restaurant and become part of the action.
We, of course, also love branding and the Ramones took the look of a band to another level. When other bands have constantly reinvented themselves, the Ramones stayed true to their ultimate Rock‘n’Roll look.
When we came across a photograph of them by the great Jill Furmanovsky on Rockarchive, playing at the Roundhouse back in 1976, we had to get a copy. It’s now on our wall acting as an inspiration to all interns that pass through the studio.
SMARTER Beta™ from Aberdeen Asset Management combines the benefits of active and passive management in a new ‘third approach’ to investing. Smart beta techniques aim to achieve returns above that of the market, or risk levels below that of the market. Aberdeen retain the numerous benefits of conventional indexing such as simplicity, objectivity, transparency and relatively low costs, achieving both higher returns and lower risk.
It’s like Smart Beta, but Smarter.
Aberdeen Asset Management love getting to grips with how the different companies they invest in operate. Meeting companies face-to-face means fund managers ensure any company they invest in aspires to best practice in every aspect of its activities. With that in mind we created a concept for their latest equities campaign that showcases how Aberdeen fund managers always insist on first-hand research and are happy to walk the shop floor when looking for companies to invest in.
We recently worked with ABTA to create their ‘I value tourism’ campaign. A suite of communication materials and assets were used to support ABTA in lobbying parliamentary candidates ahead of the General Election. The aim was to inform the candidates of the importance of tourism to the UK economy.
The materials were used across email, online and via ABTA’s social media channels (predominately twitter). Content included regional engagement and social assets.
We have been lucky enough to spot our work in all sorts of unexpected places. Most recently one of our clients spotted Keanu Reeves arriving at Zurich airport with an Aberdeen Asset Management branded trolley.
You might also have seen our work in Dr Who featuring a London 2012 bid logo or a Visa pulse POS on Coronation Street. We have even spotted Rod Stewart in front of a CitySprint van. If you see any of our work out there let us know.
This month sees Aberdeen Asset Management release the latest in a series of fun and informative guides and animations, produced by Kino, called ‘The Fables of Fixed Income’.
For the animation we recruited Sir Michael Gambon to lend his instantly recognisable voice to a series of six fables, sharing a little wisdom about the potential pitfalls of bond investing. Once again we would like to thank John Devolle and Animade for bringing their artistic talents to this project.