GATHER

09 . 08 . 2021 | BRANDING, STYLING & WALLPAPER DESIGN

Isn't it amazing how your skills and offerings (both in a personal and professional capacity) can grow, evolve and develop over time? When we started Little Bird going on five years ago, we would never have imagined working on projects that include layout, styling, brand design and implementation for physical shops and interior spaces. This is exactly why we love what we do. We came alongside the wonderful team at Fourways Community Church at The Buzz Shopping Centre to help create a space for their church community. The start of this project was coming up with a name for the space. It needed to speak to the importance of community and coming together, be strong enough that it could stand on its own and preferably just speak to the heart and vision of the space and its overall purpose. Something that is also interesting to mention is that while this space was being dreamed up, President Ramaphosa had banned all gatherings (to prevent the spread of you-know-what). The bible calls us to not neglect the gathering of the saints, but to meet together and encourage one another. We know many people who found harm in being isolated from their friends and loved ones, and so (without making this at all political), there was an important call for the church to meet together once again.

Gather (v) come together; bring together and take in from scattered places

Once the name was selected, the real fun began! The immensely talented team at FCC came up with the most wonderful ideas and we chipped in wherever needed. While the walls were being prepped, the floor was being laid, structures were bring designed and built and furniture was being sourced, we got to work on the Gather branding. Initially we were trying to come up with an icon that would resemble this act of coming or bringing together but once we found a typographic style that we absolutely loved, we decided to work with the text and create an 'icon' from that. The primary logo simply reads 'gather.' while the iconographic logo takes these letters and cascades them, interlinking the shapes from one letter to the next. This symbolises the importance of connection and community to form the greater whole or body. We then advised on signage design and implementation, which we think came out pretty well (if we say so ourselves :)).

We were then asked to design wallpaper that would stretch across a fourteen meter wall. Based on chats with the team, we decided on a very 'Little Bird' look and feel, however we didn't want it to just be a stretch of wall that had shapes scattered across it. We took a map of the area (looking at where FCC and Gather were located) and sketched out Witkoppen Road, Cedar Road and William Nicol Drive. We used a group of circular shapes to highlight the location, and incorporated a phrase found on FCC's website "There, I am with them". The wallpaper brings subtle texture and pops of colour to the space, introducing a unique element of interest.

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We have absolutely loved working on this project! Gather has only been open to its community for eight days now, but it is truly amazing to watch the space evolve and be filled with warm and friendly faces.