Moda Bagno is a luxury furniture and home goods brand. With its impeccable curatorial eye, the luxury brand has been a tastemaker for five decades, dramatically shaping homes in Greece, Turkey and Cyprus.
In 2024, the iconic brand turned 50 and approached Marlon Tate to create a celebratory campaign. Our intention was to celebrate the brandâs heritage of 50 years of style so to reflect this, we centred the campaignâs look around a âdynamicâ logo system, featuring 50 kinetic logo-idents that reference different styles of furniture and interior design. To top it all up, we developed a month-long campaign that encompasses 200 unique print, digital and outdoor executions plus a limited edition of shopping bags and merch. ââWe really wanted to reference the brandâs unapologetic creative heritage by creating something thatâs really off, but is also funny and superfluousââ Marlon Tateâs creative Director, Nikos GeorgĂłpoulos, said to The Brand Identity earlier this year.
Isabellaâs is a new bistrot restaurant that opened its doors in 2024 inside the premises of The Twenty One Hotel in Kifisia, Athens. Open exclusively for lunch, Isabellaâs is inspired by the history of Kifisia and its Belle Ăpoque while taking its name from Isabella; the original owner of the historic building.
To support its grand opening, Marlon Tate created a brand narrative and identity that references nostalgia and 1970s European luxury, love letters, postcards and ice-cream as if these were the restaurantâs ingredients. The identity is centred around a custom drawn logotype designed for use across all Isabella’s communications.
Vakalo College of Art and Design is the first school of Applied Arts in Greece to offer programmes of study at tertiary level. Founded in 1958, with a history of 65 successful years, it has established a reputation as the foremost design education institution in Greece, and among the top colleges internationally.
Marlon Tate’s Creative Director, Nikos Georgopoulos, started teaching at the iconic art School in late 2023. As a means to promote our collaboration with the Art School, we wrote, directed and produced a TikTok reel inspired surreal TV ad to celebrate the beautifully unexpected nature of creativity.
Commercial developer Blue Residences is creating an ambitious residential complex, located in the âposhâ suburb of Marousi. Set around an incredible park and the most ambitious business district of Athens, this new place will offer a sophisticated collection of beautiful and spacious apartments, elegant living spaces, unique amenities, smart features and stunning views towards the city. Looking to encapsulate this âblissfulâ take on contemporary living, we helped them name, brand and shape a bold and completely new idea, which we called âeffortless livingâ.
By considering the above, we positioned this place as a flourishing community at the intersection of contemporary urban and suburban living. We created a brand narrative that highlights one simple truth: this is the ideal place to live. Our first step was to name this exciting place âParadise Quarterâ to reflect its scale and strategic ambition. Our concept was to make everything look âparadesianâ and pop, aiming to resonate with the audience, consisting of young families and first-time buyers. Drawing upon visual language often associated with paradise, we constructed fluffy cloud messages to evoke the âparadesianâ feeling that naturally, effortless living would evoke. The campaign launched with a small plane flying around Athens with a banner featuring the tagline âEffortless living foreverâ, positioning Paradise Quarter exactly where it is meant to exist; in the sky. Following this guerrilla marketing stint, the number of people discussing it and documenting it on social media grew rapidly, leading to high numbers of people visiting the website and the marketing film that we created. One week later, we launched the print campaign in newspapers, OOO, as well as digital ads on websites and social, expanding on the narrative. We also designed and art directed the marketing brochure, hoarding, and pavilion filled with plants and water fountains.
Aiming to avoid the slick branding typical of new developments & smart living, every creative decision that we made, was carefully orchestrated around our narrative responding to a simple question â âhow does it feel to live in Paradise?â.
Ilior is Greeceâs first major co-living scheme. Formed in 2018 by Daniel Lyssy, it aims to create exceptional spaces for young and creative professionals who work from home. Ilior One âlaunched in the centre of Athensâ is the first of the brand’s instalments. Indeed, Ilior is in the process of building an ambitious network of plug-and-play spaces and buildings across the nation, that will radically transform the way Greeks live.
We were given creative freedom to brand this unique scheme. Similarly to other Mediterranean South European capitals, Athens is not very familiar with the concept of co-living. With this in mind, we decided to change the subject completely and position Ilior as an imaginary country.
Inspired by the notion that âour house is our castleâ, we developed an overarching modular and flexible identity system that draws upon the idea of a âspecial placeâ. For this purpose, a responsive brandmark that references the concept of a flag becomes central to the identity. A flag of an imaginary country where people can dream freely; work collaboratively; debate fruitfully and develop. By drawing upon the flexible architecture of Ilior spaces, the brandmark expands and contracts across different formats, as required. To further illustrate its uniqueness, the colour palette embraces bright pop colours, that no country in the world would ever use for its national flag. This country is entirely imaginary. In fact, that is its strength. Welcome to the land of the dreamers.
Located at the start of the Athenian Riviera, in the heart of Piraeus Port, the biggest passenger port in Europe, the Piraeus Tower was originally built in 1972 with the ambition to become a landmark in an area which was, at that time, rapidly changing and developing into an international hub for shipping and transportation. However, after 1982, the project was abandoned, and the Tower remained empty for the next 50 years.
In 2020, real estate company Dimand in collaboration with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Prodea Investments undertook the 99- year concession of the Piraeus Tower from the Municipality of Piraeus with a vision to restore the building into the landmark that was always meant to be. The Joint Venture appointed Marlon Tate as the creative agency to lead on the creative direction and strategy of the Piraeus Towerâs branding and advertising. Marlon Tate designed, art directed, and developed the official website of the Piraeus Tower, managing to attract the attention of investors, politicians as well as the local community. What is more, we wrote all texts and created the content for the entire responsive and modern website, including custom maps and interactive infographics designed to reflect the visual language that we created for the landmark building.
In the early 50s, after two world wars and one civil war, the Greek state was effectively bankrupt. On that basis, the Greek government decided to initiate the ambitious Xenia project; a nationwide hotel construction programme aimed at creating accommodation infrastructure. That would set the basis for the development of a tourist industry, to contribute in rebooting the economy. Throughout the 1960âs and 70âs the 59 functioning Xenia Hotels thrived financially. Although widely celebrated for their glorious post-war modernist architecture, they however never had a consistent visual identity. By the 1990âs, after decades of mismanagement, the Xenia project became inextricably linked to the Greek financial meltdown and fell into administration.
By blurring the boundaries between tourism, graphics, and fiction, âThe fictitious visual identity programme of Xenia Hotelsâ is a concept project within which we travelled back in time to create the visual identity of the once glorious, now abandoned Xenia Hotels in Greece. In collaboration with photographer Polly Brown, we created an ambitious image series presenting the imagined brand identity within a past that never happened. In this past, the Xenia hotels flourished; the de-industrialisation of Greece did not happen in the 70s. By the mid-80s the famous Omonia square in Athens was not reduced into a concrete platform and after 2011, 400.000 Greeks never left the country because there was no crisis to escape from. An alternative past has the opportunity to become a brilliant future. Fictitious, but brilliant.
âThe fictitious visual identity programme of Xenia Hotelsâ is the first instalment of Time travel branding; a trilogy of concept projects advocating design as a form of speculative research and presented as a series of talks across Europe and the US.
‘Nikos Georgopoulos adopts a âback-to-basicsâ mindset with his unusual identity for Wallis Road’. â The Brand Identity, 2021
115â119 Wallis Road is a property development and regeneration project. Consisting of affordable workspaces, retail and apartment buildings, it was proposed and designed by London-based architecture firm Pollard Thomas Edwards. It is located in the heart of Hackney Wick, Londonâs industrial district turned cultural and creative hub. Facing the challenge of convincing the sceptical local community of the projectâs necessity, as well as raising awareness of its regenerative aspirations, we devised its visual identity, strategy and communications.
Inspired by Hackney Wickâs transition from industry to creativity, we decided to establish the regeneration of 115â119 Wallis Road as a âcultural moment,â instead of just another new development. Intentionally avoiding any of the slickness typical to new developments, our solution builds upon Hackney Wickâs plethora of music festival posters and their bold repetition of colour. An aesthetic decision made with the desire to first and foremost resonate with the sceptical local community. Undeniably, people perceive regeneration projects as the beginning of social cleansing and gentrification of their area. So having something slick, that youâd expect to see in South Kensington, for example, would probably signal the wrong message.
For this purpose, the resulting identity system revolves around straightforward and lo-fi elements. Horizontal stripes in an unusual combination of brown and blue, complimented by a pairing of two classic typefaces. Uppercase Helvetica supported by Avenir. Recreating a âkind of music festival excitement,â where not worrying too much about legibility, was all part of the plan.
In the early 50s, after two world wars and one civil war, the Greek state was effectively bankrupt. On that basis, the Greek government decided to initiate the ambitious Xenia project; a nationwide hotel construction programme aimed at creating accommodation infrastructure. That would set the basis for the development of a tourist industry, to contribute in rebooting the economy. Throughout the 1960âs and 70âs the 59 functioning Xenia Hotels thrived financially. Although widely celebrated for their glorious post-war modernist architecture, they however never had a consistent visual identity. By the 1990âs, after decades of mismanagement, the Xenia project became inextricably linked to the Greek financial meltdown and fell into administration.
By blurring the boundaries between tourism, graphics, and fiction, âThe fictitious visual identity programme of Xenia Hotelsâ is a concept project within which we travelled back in time to create the visual identity of the once glorious, now abandoned Xenia Hotels in Greece. In collaboration with photographer Polly Brown, we created an ambitious image series presenting the imagined brand identity within a past that never happened. In this past, the Xenia hotels flourished; the de-industrialisation of Greece did not happen in the 70s. By the mid-80s the famous Omonia square in Athens was not reduced into a concrete platform and after 2011, 400.000 Greeks never left the country because there was no crisis to escape from. An alternative past has the opportunity to become a brilliant future. Fictitious, but brilliant.
âThe fictitious visual identity programme of Xenia Hotelsâ is the first instalment of Time travel branding; a trilogy of concept projects advocating design as a form of speculative research and presented as a series of talks across Europe and the US.
