As we unveil the new brand at Daedalus Waterfront, we thought we should share some of the thinking and some of the process behind it.
From the very beginning we have always wanted to ensure that we paid homage to the history of the base, and to celebrate and save the important heritage of this place. We want to reflect the history of the site, and we want to infuse it with a sense of energy and excitement for the future.
Our starting point was Daedalus itself. Daedalus was the greek symbol of ingenuity, of engineering, of architecture and invention. The father of Icarus, he was the creator of the Minotaur’s maze, and of the waxed wings that he used to escape from King’s Minos’s imprisonment on the island of Crete. Icarus is perhaps the better known relative for having flown too close to the sun and then crashed. it’s important to remember that the design of the wings was not at fault in the accident – it was Icarus’s failure to adhere to the previously agreed flight safety plan.
Daedalus was therefore a fitting name for a base where flight engineering, training and innovation were fundamental to both its history and its raison d’être. Although the site was known at various points as RNAS Lee-on-the-Solent, a Royal Air Force station, and later HMS Ariel during its period as a ground training establishment, HMS Daedalus remains its best-known and longest-lasting name.
The symbol of the base, seen on crests and plaques, is a stylised version of Daedalus, showing his face in front of a pair of wings and the rays of the sun. And soon as we started to create the new brand identity for Daedalus Waterfront, marking the transition from planning to delivery, we knew that we want to keep that historic imagery, but to bring it forward to the present day, and for reasons of both respect and appropriateness, to move it away from the military representation.
We started by softening the face, and simplifying the wings and the raised of the sun, whilst keeping the same shape and format. We introduce the Waterfront part of the name, and obviously dropping the HMS prefix. We kept the rope motif ringing the central image, but again, simplified the drawing.
It was really important to us that the whole development is known as one, whole place- and that all elements of the project are seen as being part of that whole – and so the Daedalus Waterfront name is applied to every phase, as is the new Daedalus Waterfront marque.
We have selected a new font to be used across all the different phases, and picked a strong blue, that reflects both the predominant colour of the Royal Navy and the colour of the Fleet Air Arm. We have repeatedly used the two-tone blue zig-zag seem on the Fleet Air Arm tie, both in printed decoration and architectural treatments.
In order to bring colour, vibrancy and variety, different uses, and different parts of the site use added colours, different design treatments appropriate to those phases – so the active and public Seaplane Square is the most vibrant, the industrial and commercial is more utilitarian, and the residential areas are quieter and greener.
We have used bespoke, hand-drawn illustrations through-out, in the maps and plans, and in the illustrations of some of our project principles, because we don’t want to use generic, stock imagery showing beautiful people enjoying perfect cappuccinos in generic locations to present an idyllic imagination of the future – but we want to show specific ideas commissioned specially, accurate CGI or computer renderings of what we are going to make, or real photographs of this place, and the places we have made.
