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.
Initially owned by industrialist and famed contemporary art collector Dakis Ioannou, The Twenty One is a boutique hotel located in the beautiful and upscale suburb of Kifisia in Athens, Greece. In 2021, the Hotel changed hands and passed on to the brilliant minds behind the luxury brand Moda Bagno who forged a new and exciting direction for the Hotel but also faced an important challenge; how to compete with boutique hotels located in Athensâ historic centre when the Twenty Oneâs Kifisia location offered no direct links to culture.
In late 2022, Marlon Tate was invited to design and art direct the Hotelâs new brand identity, marketing collateral and wayfinding, as well as a new brand narrative, that would relaunch the Hotel. Our idea was simple: Culture exists when luxury is integrated. The Hotel features 21 rooms with beautiful furniture, extraordinary amenities and a famed restaurant that for years, has been a dining spot for successful individuals.
The new brand narrative reflected our strategic ambition to position the Twenty One as an Institution; a cultural attraction itself. The branding is anchored around our tagline âluxury is your cultureâ and draws upon 1960s conceptual art and concrete poetry. We wrote and directed 21 welcome videos referencing video art installations and designed a signage system echoing environmental graphics that can be found inside international contemporary art galleries rather than boutique hotels in Athensâ historic centre.
High-Rise housing and skyscrapers is a very popular type of housing in the UK, which is favoured among the younger generation. On the occasion of an ongoing debate about this type of housing, Marlon Tate was commissioned to design and art direct âWhat is the future of High-Rise Housing?â, a book examining the long-term social and financial impacts of residential towers. Published by London School of Economics, the publication consists of a series of essays written by prominent architects, academics and theorists including June Barnes, former CEO of ETHA; Andrew Beharrell, former senior partner of Pollard Thomas Edwards; and London School of Economics’ distinguished policy fellow, Kath Scanlon among others.
The pocket-sized paperback, featuring illustrations and photographs by Londoners assumes a negative stance towards High-Rise Housing and as such, Marlon Tate was brought in to make sure the publication sustains a contemporary look and feel. Our design and art direction draws inspiration from 1960s political manifesto pocket books. The cover references tall buildings as well as demonstration placates featuring visual language that reflects the polemic intensity of demonstrating as well as the schism between different opinions. To further develop our idea of a political manifesto we used the typeface Marche, which is a heavy-weight display typeface. The whole book is printed in two Pantone colours; the green and the purple which we also printed the edges of the book with. Everything else on the inside is black and white or monochrome (purple) to evoke the DIY xerox aesthetic that protesters and squatters employ when communicating their ideas and manifestos.
Marlon Tate is a new creative agency known for creating narrative-driven branding and advertising for exciting brands by combining fiction and surrealist storytelling. A small, yet prolific creative agency, our offices are based in Athens and London but we also claim to have two more; one in Jupiter and one in Mars as a humorous take on the myth of the massive ad agency with offices in ”New York-Milan-Shanghaiââ. Our objective was to come up with a creative way to let journalists, clients and other agencies know who we are and what we do.
Our strategy was to create a press kit that would not only let people know who we are, but it would also expand on our metaphorical narrative that we are the first agency with offices in space while at the same time promoting Marlon Tateâs strong suite; storytelling. Essentially through this press kit, our objective was to highlight our talent, our creativity; our imaginative copywriting, our provocative art direction and the strategic abilities of our team. They say that the best way to tell a story is to immerse your audience in it and that is why we wanted our press kit to have an experiential aspect to it. So we decided to create a press kit that could have been posted from outer space.
We created vacuum-sealed space bags containing a newspaper with fictional news (that we wrote), fictional ads (that we made) for fictional products (that we wish they had existed).
Essentially, the press kit is a vacuum-sealed packaging that draws upon the food packaging NASA createâs for the astronauts who travel in outer space. Inside our vacuum-sealed press kit the recipient can find The New World Times; a fake newspaper featuring fictional news and fictional ads for fake products. By flicking through the newspaper, one can read the weather forecast in Mars, an interview with our very own creative director Nikos Georgopoulos on how does it feel to lead the first creative agency with offices in space as well as a series of articles such as the one about Rorry Ross (fictional character), the charismatic Chief Executive of Open Planet (fictional company) who teamed up with other Earthlings celebrities to launch a new hip brand of mood stabilisers called ‘Moondyz’ (fictional brand). The ambitious young editor of this article, expresses her enthusiasm and offers her congratulations to Mr Ross because ”… Moondyz are here to change everything we know about space travelling”. After all, as she notes, no matter how brilliant and rewarding the journey to the Moon is, itâs also really tough on the human body and overall mood. She also notes that it has been more than a few instances that she has missed on extraordinary performances at the ‘Galaxia Opera Centre’ (fictional concert hall on the Moon) or dinner reservations at the iconic ‘Loona’ (fictional fancy restaurant on the Moon) due to appalling mood drops caused by being inside a space rocket for 8 hours. Of course, the chances of this happening again, she claims, are near zero because of ‘Moondyz’ although she goes on to note that ‘Moondyz’ come with its fair share of side effectsâ most famously, the possibility of turning your hair electric blue (for at least five days)
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.
There is a crack in everything and thatâs how the future gets in. Located within the mainly residential area of Bromley-By-Bow in Hackney, East London, Jolles House is a historical building named after Sir John Jolles; a city of London merchant and a member of the Worshipful Company of Drapers, who was Sheriff of London from 1605 to 1606 and elected Lord Mayor of the City in 1615. As part of an ambitious redevelopment programme by Poplar Harca and Pollard Thomas Edwards architects, the estate will now become an ambitious landmark building providing 70 new residential units within two buildings for young professionals interested in culture and East London’s famously vibrant community. Ahead of its launch, Marlon Tate created a new place narrative, brand identity, a tile-based environmental graphic system and launch campaign for the redeveloped Estate.
Our strategy was informed by the City of London itself, highlighting the fact that in this globally celebrated capital, past, present and future coexist in the most extraordinary ways. Inspired by heritage, local vernacular, British typography and specificity of place, our brand identity, wayfinding and marketing campaign for the landmark building echoes Londonâs past and present by drawing upon the disrupted aesthetic of old and new layers of torn up posters. Thatâs probably how the future gets in anyway.
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.
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.
