Ascential

Background

Home to market-leading brands including LIONS and Money20/20, Ascential helps the world's biggest brands navigate what's next through events, intelligence and advisory.

Following the recent sale of its Digital Commerce and Product Design businesses, Ascential’s streamlined, events-led business now serves two core markets: the Marketing industry, through LIONS, and the Financial Technology industry through Money20/20.
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In light of this transformation, Ascential appointed DesignStudio to rebrand the organisation with the goal of creating a brand that represents the new, focused offering, setting them apart from the competition.

Immersion

During our immersion phase, we set off on a mission to get a deeper understanding of Ascential and its two core divisions LIONS and Money 20/20. Visiting the world-class, unmissable event that is Cannes Lions allowed us to feel the incredible energy that arises when industries come together, face to face.

Brand identity

We built the new Ascential brand – including strategy, visual and verbal identity – around the idea of the power of convening at Ascential events. This concept of coming together became our lens for the entire brand. ‘Be at the heart of what’s next’ forms the foundation of the new strategic proposition. This phrase highlights how these exceptional events, experiences and platforms place people at the heart: at the heart of the conversation, at the heart of the action, at the heart of what’s next.

Brand expression

The logo, formed from five variable arrowheads coming together, symbolises this meeting point and is the beginning of Ascential’s design system. The bespoke wordmark is crafted with a softened cross bar, angled terminals and curved connection points to marry perfectly with the symbol.

The colour palette is inspired by the brand’s editorial roots, featuring strong use of charcoal and off-white. The lead brand colour, Ascential Yellow, acts as a spotlight highlighting UI, typography and data to help us tell stories. The product brands have always been at the heart of the group, and their vibrant colours feature in the brand to signal their importance.

The design system naturally builds out from the idea in the logo to form a pattern language which can be used to convey a wide range of expressions. This can vary from bold and directional to radial and expressive, all while interacting seamlessly with imagery, typography and illustration. This pattern design system comes to life in motion, with 4 interactive behaviours for use in films and digital spaces throughout the brand experience.

The typography brings a unique and emotive voice, it’s designed to echo the ‘heart’ and the ‘what’s next’ of our strategy. Our serif, Rando brings the human warmth and Yellix, the Sans, is built for digital and brings the contemporary touch. Our typography combines with our new tone of voice principles to bring inspiring energy and heartfelt connection to our messaging.

To complete the brand toolkit, we created illustration guidelines and a series of bespoke illustrations to introduce moments of magic and bring wit and intelligence to Ascential’s communications. They are used to depict people at the events as well as the ideas and insights that emerge. Illustration brings warmth and playfulness, allowing abstract ideas to be conveyed that photography can’t capture.

Impact

Ascential’s refreshed brand enabled a move beyond media to become the home to the world's best events. Ascential is already delivering on this ambition with impressive 13% growth in the last 12 months.

As Ascential continues to bring its users to the heart of what’s next, we're proud to have created a new identity to support them – one that starts with people at the heart.

“We embarked on a journey to reinvent our brand and redefine the category in which we operate. Our new brand delivered on all fronts, fully realising the ambitious vision we set out to achieve.”

DINA ELRAYYES,
VP CONTENT & CREATIVE DIRECTOR at ASCENTIAL