in detail
After a disappointing start, the fortunes of luxury family club Purple Dragon have been revived with a new site and brand identity.
IN 2008 the first Purple Dragon family members club opened in Battersea, south London. With annual subscriptions starting at £2,500, the target market was rather wealthy clientele. Founded by ex-fashion label owner, Sharai Meyers, the idea seemed sound; a then fashionable Manga (Japanese comics and cartoons) characterised identity was devised, aligned with the best in Italian furniture supplemented with good taste books, toys and games and all housed in 10,500sq ft of secured space. However, despite a spate of early publicity that fuelled interest, the Battersea location proved to be the site’s downfall. The Chelsea-based Yummy Mummy just would not cross the river to the south of London. A plan was needed to create a true Purple
Dragon brand, capable of being developed as a hierarchical series of offers. It was clear the Battersea site would not suffice as a flagship location, but what to do with the huge space? A Chelsea-based site was in the offing and this became the catalyst to build a luxury club brand worthy of the affluent SW6 demographic and define a diffused version of the Battersea location. Keen and Able were appointed to design the Chelsea site including all interiors, graphics, website, marketing materials etc. Their brief for Battersea was much simpler, being a rationalisation of the space to incorporate secure soft play space and
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Enter the dragon
sleeping facilities for a much younger kindergarten audience. Initial research identified a disconnection between the Manga-based identity, the offer and family positioning. In terms of the business it was essential that the new brand could travel and be capable of demonstrating an integrated experience across all media touch points. An early analysis workshop produced the
driver ‘Purple Dragon...Effortless family time all of the time.’ This idea of effortless summarised the approach and provided the insight to building the brand. Further workshops helped to define the effortless positioning, and develop a hierarchy of both identity and offer. Within its conceptual design work, Keen and Able created a series of themed ideas and language demonstrating how each key area could combine to produce a single all encompassing Purple Dragon brand experience. “Meeting with suppliers from volcano
sculptors to water engineers, sound and light technologists to dinosaur suppliers touched the child in us all and helped shape, build and grow our vision for this brand,” says Eddie McAtominey, partner at Keen and Able and creative lead on the Purple Dragon project. The brand design specialists began by defining the ever-changing nature of the environment through the graphic identity, which utilised a modernist flowing bespoke font in a spectrum of colours, combined
with organic illustrated devices used across a variety of mediums. Brand hierarchy was created by use of the ‘club’ and ‘kindergarten’ descriptors with a muted and pastel colour palette to distinguish the two. At 12000sq ft, the Chelsea club had seemed a large space to fill however a swimming pool, restaurant, library, soft play area, recording studio, kitchen and laboratory soon filled the area. Action words were used to describe the activity in each zone such as Beach Bums for the pool, Lounge Lovers for the library, Imaginarium for the open play area, High Rollers for the soft play area, Djs and Divas for the recording studio, Gourmet Gofers for the kitchen and Lab Rats for the science laboratory. Purple Dragon is a luxurious extension of the home where parents and children can kick off their shoes and choose to relax or play. From the point of entry with its single LED illuminated sign on a long curtain wall of glazing, subtle white on white wall illustrations subliminally provide the member with a hint of the excitement to the areas beyond. White is the backdrop, warmed or cooled
with effective lighting. All the rooms are formed with rounded corners. Nothing is harsh or sharp. Irregular shaped doors and portholes give glimpses into the play spaces beyond. A bespoke timber floor in four soft colours are used as a visual pull,
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