Our interiors team have been working with Kindred for a few years now, and this year our branding team were invited to complete the design circle and refresh the brand. Kindred is a West London-based Open House hos­pi­tal­i­ty venue set within a grade II listed mansion called Bradmore House. They are pas­sion­ate about building community and real human con­nec­tions; inspired by the openness, warmth, and togeth­er­ness created by gathering around a campfire.

For the rebrand­ing project, it was important to keep the essence of what makes Kindred great – the playful but pro­fes­sion­al tone of voice, the sense of togeth­er­ness and, of course, the campfire concept. But much as the interiors team have added extra layers of styling to the venue, injecting yet more heart and soul to the space, the brand identity also needed a similarly creative evolution.

We then set to work devel­op­ing Kindred a playful new illus­tra­tion style. Creating unique mono­chrome illus­tra­tions to help bring to life all the things that make Kindred so special. A grand piano, branded drum kit and micro­phone on a looping cord to represent Kindred’s dynamic roster of live music events. Notebooks, coffee cups and canines to represent the venue’s dog-friendly mem­ber­ship co-working spaces. And a rich col­lec­tion of food and drink inspired illus­tra­tions show­cas­ing Kindred’s fantastic F&B offering, for use across menus and marketing materials.

After thought­ful­ly pairing perfect typefaces and adding extra dec­o­ra­tive touches, we started to work up the full suite of menus. The pièce de resis­tance is a stunning (if we do say so ourselves) hardcover 40 page drinks book. The beautiful tome, with tan-orange cover featuring an under­stat­ed campfire emboss, is printed on subtly textured Fedrigoni paper with matching orange stitching. It really is a piece of sto­ry­telling in its own right, with a narrative talking about the prove­nance of every­thing Kindred does, cham­pi­oning Kindred’s inde­pen­dent London suppliers — all artisans and family busi­ness­es. The tone of voice is whim­si­cal­ly descrip­tive and full of our illus­tra­tions which take the reader on a journey through the makers who pour their passion into their very special products.

We also created a ‘cocktail toolkit’ to illus­trate all of Kindred’s distinct cocktails. A set of com­po­nents including different glass types – from lowball and highball, to flutes and shots — with lots of illus­trat­ed dec­o­ra­tive embell­ish­ments like ice and fruit, all created indi­vid­u­al­ly, meaning that it’ll be easy to create new cocktails for future updates to the book using this ready-made tool kit com­po­nents as the bedrock.

Our new branding has now been rolled grace­ful­ly over all other touch­points, like event posters (for Kindred’s busy live programme of music/comedy/networking/socials), loyalty cards and day passes, creating a seamless expe­ri­ence for Kindred’s community to thrive in a space where the brand and interior are har­mo­nious­ly balanced.