Wildish & Co. rebrands Spacemade, a flexible workspace company

Founded in 2020, Spacemade is a co-working space provider with a difference. Rather than just plopping yourself down wherever there's a space, you get your own permanent desk in what's intended to be a beautifully designed, shared workspace. The company currently has 11 locations across England – nine in London, one in Birmingham, and one in Leeds.

This January, they decided it was time for a new visual identity. The original Spacemade identity was designed with solely B2B audiences in mind. It consisted of a simple all-lowercase wordmark and a logomark formed of a patterned 's' shape. The idea had been that while the B2B-intended branding for Spacemade was minimal and somewhat corporate, personality would come through in the designs for the individual locations.

They initially contacted Wildish & Co. on the strength of its experience in creating brands which had to flex across digital applications and real-life physical spaces. (One example of this had been their work for Curve Club, which we covered in May last year.)

Based in Clerkenwell, London, Wildish & Co. is an independent creative studio established in 2012. Their work spans from start-ups to global brands such as Penhaligon's London, Bumble, Badoo, Timex Global, Penguin Random House and Nestlé.

The brief

For the 2024 redesign, Spacemade worked on strategy in-house, including its redefined purpose, mission, vision, values, personality and tone of voice. Wildish & Co., meanwhile, was tasked with creating a cohesive, confident identity system.

This umbrella identity had to straddle all the individual locations while strengthening the central parent brand across marketing materials, digital, physical spaces, and more to increase brand awareness and recognition as the business continued to expand.

"There's a difference between a logo and some nice brand fonts and a design system," explains Wildish & Co. founder and managing director Sam Fresco. The time had come for Spacemade to apply that strategic thinking and create a comprehensive design system that can move with the business as it evolves."

Brand positioning

"We recently made a deliberate transition from a B2B brand primarily aimed at institutional landlords to a B2B2C brand with a stronger consumer focus," says Anna Wollaston, head of marketing at Spacemade. "The existing visual brand identity was no longer fit for purpose: our evolution underscored the need for a well-defined, fresh and inspiring parent brand."

The new branding had to captivate a wide range of audiences, each with unique needs and reasons for engaging with Spacemade. On the corporate front, it needed to appeal to investors, landlords and brokers, while on the consumer side, it had to attract a diverse mix of individuals and companies with preferences that vary by location. The challenge was to create a brand that could seamlessly resonate with both worlds.

"One challenge in creating the graphic devices for the new brand was ensuring scalability, versatility, accessibility, and cultural appropriateness," says Wildish & Co. creative director Jake Allnutt. "The brand elements needed to work seamlessly alongside various sub-brands while maintaining their own identity, so we used a relatively stripped-back approach to avoid overpowering the sub-brands."

Logo, typography and colours

Spacemade's new logo takes the form of a simple rectangular shape built into its 'S', creating a shape that references the idea of an open doorway to invite people into the workspaces. The shape also looks to further underscore the idea of human connection and the opportunities for forming communities within each space.

The shape can be used as a standalone icon or as a versatile framing device to house other imagery and brand photography, where it becomes a showcase for the people who use the workspaces. It also comes to life in motion graphics applications.

When it comes to typography, headlines are cast in the neo-grotesk font Aeonik, with bold weight in all caps; this "exudes a direct and simple tone of voice," says Jack. Body copy, meanwhile, uses the clean, modern font Fakt to ensure readability across various applications and scales. And industrial-inspired Apercu Mono by Colophon Foundry in all-caps is used for supporting copy such as addresses and signage to establish a strong yet approachable tone.

The colour palette uses a variety of tones, including eye-catching vibrant yellow, peach, and teal, with supporting black and off-white, to reflect the brand's energetic, forward-thinking, and engaging approach and its new tone of voice, which is friendly, confident, and welcoming.

Brand concept and ad copy

The idea of community forms the central concept underpinning Spacemade's new branding, underscoring its ethos of fostering real-world, meaningful connections. This extends into seeing Spacemade as "the ultimate hosts: flexible, personable, and on your wavelength," says Sam.

"From a creative standpoint, we had to visualise the idea of Spacemade as something that brings different people and ideas together – just as our umbrella brand had to combine multiple graphic and brand elements into something cohesive and dynamic."

The new ad copy line 'Not just a pretty space' was introduced to "capture a light-heartedness," Sam adds. "It shows that Spacemade workspaces look good, but in a way that's more than skin deep. They're also considerate about who works there and why people come together, and the new tagline 'For meaningful connections' heroes the importance of in-person interactions."

"The new brand ultimately provides a foundational backbone to help Spacemade communicate more confidently – it feels much more grown-up."

Anna adds: "It was great to see our founders, who were initially cautious about the level of change, fully embrace it, taking them on a journey of what they thought would be a 'refresh' to a full-scale visual rebrand. The new brand identity is not only visually appealing but also easy to use. It's intuitive, flexible and adaptable, which was a key requirement."

The new Spacemade visual identity will be used across all online and offline channels and is currently being rolled out within the physical spaces across the UK. Wildish & Co. also created a comprehensive set of brand guidelines containing a broad graphic toolkit that allows the in-house team the flexibility and direction to apply the new identity in future.