URBAN IMAGE | From logo to brand

Abstract

Corporate image has arised in the last Century as a strategy to assume visual identity and a great power of attraction. By using that strategy, corporations have become a sort of “economic divinity” able to seduce and move the mass of consumers. The aim of the article is to describe how to apply the strategy of corporate image on a pavilion, designed by some students of Hong Kong and Palermo, in order to make it visually relevant and to highlight its strong points, which are connected to light and water. In this perspective, some important cases in the history of design have been anylised with punctual examples, starting from the beginning of Twenty Century to come to todays situation, in which corporations use corporate image to seduce people and move them towards goods and goods. In this way, the pavilion, which is a sort of materialization of academic research between Hong Kong and Palermo, assumes its own “corporate image”, with a logo, a story, and a series of communicative artefacts able to express the common points between two cities so distant geographically and culturally. The conclusion is that for a designer this work represents a kind of redemption. In fact, the designer does not work here for a commercial corporation, in order to make it a magnet for money by using powerful and sexy images. On the contrary, he works for a cultural “corporation” or better for an (cultural) idea that finds its physical form in a pavilion. Through an effective “corporate” image, this time, it is possible to express the true value of a place, exactly designed between Hong Kong and Palermo.