Future Brand

Whilst in London a visit was set up by our tutors and a group of us went up to Future Brand. Futurebrand is a large design company that is ran globally, they have a network of 25 international office that allow clients to experience them collaborating over seas to reach a perfect end product. Their aim is to establish brands that "think ahead to stay ahead." They do work for large well known companies, Becks, Cadbury's, UPS, Barclay's, MasterCard and many more.

When we travelled down there we were greeted by Karen Vance and Chris Jenkins, they showed us through the work they had worked on. Chris concentrated mostly on beers - not a bad job. He explained how he got from where they were to where they are now. Which I found was a great thing to do. Usually we are shown final products and that is it. One piece of work he shown us as a finished thing was a font that Chris along with a structural design team developed. Their idea was to get the font to stand out on the bar. The font was for Beck Vier, the identity needed to be kept the same as its parent brand Becks, but this is a lighter beer, the silver metal background shows this lightness.


Another piece of work Chris had been working on was Brahma - a beverage with effortless flair. He showed us the bottle before they worked on it, his sketches and the final product. Future Brand created a new brand identity and packaging based on the creative idea of ‘effortless flair’ that captured the Brazilian energy, passion and creative spirit known as “ginga.” This included the structural design of the bottle to reflect the rhythm and fluidity of Brazil. The design specification ensured that the curved bottle could be produced without alteration to existing production lines, and removal of the label achieved significant production cost savings.




Chris and Karen showed us some of the work they have both worked on and showed the different stages of the development, they also went through the boards that they actually took to the clients to present their ideas. They have both done work for big names such as Becks, Nestle and Dove, it was a good experience to visit Chris and Karen and now I have contacts for the future.

It was a really good experience to visit Future Band as it is such a big company, much bigger than the ones that I have visited before, with approximately 70 working there, it is one of the biggest. Chris and Karen showed us around the agency and explained the work that each section did. The idea is one place, the it moves around and around and around before it is ready to go into production. This is so much different to the smaller companies as you do not see the whole production really but on a plus you work in big groups so you have the opportunity to bounce ideas of each other and work in a team.