King’s Cross

Written By Vickie Hayward

King’s Cross
King’s Cross Design District
Placemaking, 2018 - 2021

Strategy, branding and placemaking for Coal Drops yard and King’s Cross, ‘King’s Cross Design District’ was a 10-day pillar event as part of our wider placemaking strategy for the estate.

Art, Architecture and Design have been central to the development of King’s Cross since work on the site began. With the imminent opening of Coal Drops Yard, we proposed stepping up their existing London Design Festival offer by creating an official design district in which tenants were supported to take part, positioning the area as a destination for good design and design goods.

We worked directly with the tenants to develop their projects and commissioned large-scale public realm installations to maximise attention for the district. Alongside this, we partnered with Kellenberger-White to deliver a visual identity, way-finding system and social-media campaign. A characterful poster typeface, KW Litfass, was overprinted on acid tones and applied to a low-waste street poster-style campaign. The concrete pipes were borrowed from an adjacent building site and stacked into large columns, then wrapped with screen-printed posters, creating a trail of touch points spread across 67 acres of public space.

King’s Cross Design District became a tentpole event in the estate’s cultural calendar; a space for experimentation that generated consistent quarterly and annual highs in footfall, revenue, press coverage and social media engagement.

 
 

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