Dubai Festival City Destination branding

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Dubai Festival City is a 1600 acre mixed-use development, spanning four kilometres of the Dubai creek frontage. It houses several residential areas, schools, office towers, a Robert Trent Jones II golf course, retail showrooms, luxury hotels, a marina and a shopping/entertainment complex. Al-Futtaim Investments is one of the oldest and largest business groups in Dubai, and this multi-billion dollar development itself has become the address for a multitude of hospitality and retail brands.

As the first major masterplan community in Dubai, our challenge was to create a brand identity that stood strong and would not be diluted by the many components within the development. If too much emphasis was put on the different brands of the individual components, it would have run the risk of weakening the overarching brand.

A single brand solution

Before we embarked on the project, each new piece of the development had a distinct identity, based purely on communication needs. We focused on a single destination brand consolidated on a single approach. It was particularly important that the brand of the primary component – the shopping centre – was linked to the overarching Festival City brand so by naming it Festival Centre and creating a complementary visual style, a single brand identity was maintained.

Growing with the client

In defining the brand architecture for the colourful portfolio of experiences present at Dubai Festival City, we had to journey with the client. As the project evolved, we grew and maintained a sustainable positioning and brand identity in the highly cluttered property scene of the Middle East.

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Allowing for evolution

Projects of this magnitude and diversity continue to evolve for years after they’re first conceived, and it has been crucial to start off with focused brand vision and a well-defined framework of brand architecture. That, along with the client’s transparency, has secured us a logical and flexible platform to continue developing the experience brands of Dubai Festival City.

The Dubai Festival City icon, which depicts the “celebration of life’s possibilities”, was integral to the identity of the brand. The versatile icon stands for the corporate face of the project and is also part of the identity of its most public-facing brand - the Festival Centre, which is the heart of the Dubai Festival City experience.

Dubai Festival City is confidently building strategic awareness through its family of brands that stand out, each in its competitor setting, with distinct and sustainable positioning and personality.