St Pancras Hotel Identity

29.06.2011 – Stephen Holmes

The new identity for the hotel at St Pancras

Walking up to Kings Cross I passed the newly completed St Pancras Hotel, which looks stunning.

The new identity for the hotel looks really good, with typography that harks back to the golden age of steam, whilst at the same time looking really classy and modern.

It’s a bit of a shame that it features additional information (‘Renaissance Hotel London’) in so many of its applications as it detracts a little from the main identity – but still manages to look good.

The ‘Est. 1873′ is a nice touch but a little cheeky, as the hotel hasn’t been open for about the last 75 years.

And finding our way to a better one

04.05.2011 – Stephen Holmes

RAC Advert

Compared to yesterday’s poor effort, here’s a far better advert for the RAC. Clearly focussed on who it’s aimed at and what the benefit is.

A good idea with some good short copy.

Nice.

Highlighting a crap advert

03.05.2011 – Stephen Holmes

Stabilo Highlighter Tube Advert

Saw this delightful advert on the Tube – so where do we start…

  • Would it be the awful copy?
  • Possibly the ‘Boss’ play-on-words down the right hand side?
  • The poor typography?
  • The dismal prizes that can be won?
  • Or maybe just the piss-poor cut outs of the USB key fob, where it looks suspiciously like someone’s just used the magic wand tool and then called it a day?

Stephen’s in The Hospital

06.04.2011 – Stephen Holmes

Had a lovely surprise this morning as the latest copy of The Hospital Club’s magazine H came through the letterbox – a full page feature on us. Nice.

Blue bread, nice.

10.03.2011 – Stephen Holmes

Poster for the newly packaged Warburtons

Here’s the new outdoor advertising to compliment their new TV campaign (you can see one of the ads here, should you bothered to trek through a Flash only site with no deep linking – or another, not as good one, here on Warburton’s own site).

It also shows off their new packaging. Which isn’t great.

Pushing the brand name heavily, ‘fine’.

Having a tagline that seems to be heavily influenced by Wickes (although not quite as good), ‘a bit confusing but ok’.

Lacking family heritage elements (even if that’s what they’re pushing in the TV ads), ‘odd but ok’.

Picking a strong solid colour for the packaging to help shelf standout, ‘fine’.

Making the entire pack blue – ‘bloody weird’.

Blue doesn’t feature too heavily in food (or its packaging) and so is subconsciously (an evolutionary trait) tied to things that one shouldn’t eat. It is also the delightful colour that bread (and other foods) happen to go when they go mouldy. So it looks like you’re selling mouldy bread. Great strategy guys.