Bibliothèque’s campaign for Kontor aims to redefine how we see creative spaces

Luke Appleby and James Townsend approached London-based Bibliothèque in 2014 and commissioned the studio to create a name and identity for Kontor, their new real estate consultancy. “With a focus on the creative, media and tech industries they were keen to avoid the safe and traditional world of their more corporate competitors,” says designer Ella Jackson who worked on the project. “Disruptive, contemporary and reliable were key attributes they wanted to communicate, with personality more akin to a media agency than a standard estate agent.”

Kontor finds office spaces for start-ups through to well established businesses in the creative and tech world, finding a place they can call their work home. Changing the way a real estate consultancy is perceived isn’t easy so Bibliothèque worked hard to translate Kontor’s values into an identity which is clean, communicative and stands out in a crowded market. The team worked on all aspects of development, including the name. “The process of naming is always fun. Kontor is a nod to the contours of the urban landscape that it works across. With the change from a ‘c’ to a ‘k’ the also becomes the Swedish word for ‘office’,” explains Ella.

The logo itself follows this notion of contour lines on a map, and each letterform shapes its own “mini landscape with highlighted zones similar to areas on a floor plan”. A key idea behind the identity, is that there are multiple orientations of the logo, allowing it to adapt to the shape of its surroundings.

“The letterforms for the word mark are bespoke,” says Ella. “Each letter was first drawn using three lines. Junctions were connected to form the shapes. Each letter was drawn and coloured differently to create tension within the word mark.” For other parts of the identity, Karla and Akzidenz Grotesk have been used as supporting typefaces. “ We used Karla, for its personality even at a small size, and Akzidenz, for its strength at large scale.”

To help emphasise this crispness, punchy tones of blue and yellow have been applied to the identity. “The colour palette was really important and a great opportunity to stand out,” says Ella. “There are many corporate and overused colours associated with the property world, which we aimed to avoid. The yellow and blue came from the Swedish Flag, a nice parallel to its name but more importantly it just felt bold, fresh and memorable.”

The core identity has been around for a couple of years now, and the team have developed the website into one of its most valuable assets. “Kontor recently launched its property section, which showcases a curated selection of properties to buy and lease. Our job was to create something engaging and dynamic, but still extremely user friendly. We wanted something people would respond well to while being extremely well-connected and we worked with developer Joel Barker to realise this.”

Part of the website launch was an animation for Kontor, which was a collaboration between Bibliothèque and SR Partners. This is Kontor.Space is based on its identity and shares Kontor’s viewpoint on the property market today. This short film gives the original identity a wonderful energy and elegance as we see neat, graphic illustrations emulate the narrator’s words.

The animation is just one part of the studio’s new campaign for Kontor, with street posters and other advertisements providing even more exposure for the property business. “With the campaign we want to develop the idea of Kontor as an adjective for describing the perfect working space – Kontor Space. The way we view our requirements of office space has changed dramatically over the past few years and we wanted to use language to help us tell this story. The words came first, and the stripped-back but bold approach to the animation and poster campaign developed out of that.”

The campaign is set to roll out over the next few months and Bibliothèque hope it will create a richer picture of Kontor as a brand. “We want the identity, website and campaign to set Kontor apart from its competitors and communicate its modern and personal approach to finding properties for businesses.”