Conjuring a community

How do you create a feeling of community before it exists? You sell a vision.

Middlewood Locks is set to be one of Manchester’s largest new neighbourhoods, with space for living, working and playing. But this new waterside community, nestled at the point Manchester and Salford meet, doesn’t actually exist yet.

So we designed a unique brand identity and distinctive marketing collatoral to help bring the vision to life.

Inspired by canals, colours and characters

We started by building a full brand identity, taking inspiration from the development’s canalside setting, nature and brightly painted narrowboats. A detailed brand strategy made sure the brand was used correctly across everything, right down to the street signs.

This illustrative approach allowed us to create a toolkit that could be used to tell different stories across various touchpoints. This was vital at the stage before CGIs were available - the illustrations helped create a warm, friendly look and feel with a distinct personality.

Taking it online

We brought the colourful branding to life in the form of a website and a short film, which communicated the vision for the neighbourhood in a simple, appealing and very human way.

Launch Website

The next chapter

Once this exciting new neighbourhood was ready to go to market, it was time to create a brochure detailing the vision. We used the colourful illustrations we’d created for the brand, as well as vibrant photography and a friendly tone of voice to tell the story of the whole scheme in more detail.

And because Middlewood Locks is one of the city’s largest new developments, the brochure was bilingual, to appeal to both local buyers and international investors.