Balabala’s new brand identity positions them as a truly fashion-forward childrenswear brand, appealing to both millennial parents and style-conscious kids.
We were excited to see the new brand identity we created for Chinese childrenswear brand Balabala officially launch this month. The brand’s new look is bold, playful, fashionable and full of character, truly reflecting their edgy attitude and aligning with their core purpose of offering the fun and freedom that children need to experiment and be creative with their own style.
Here's the story behind the playful rebrand:
Balabala’s existing logo needed a grown-up transformation in order to appeal to the style-conscious tweenager, as well as the millennial parent and children of all ages. Their cutting-edge range of kids clothing is cool and fashion-forward - the new logo needed to represent that. Balabala’s trendsetting activities outside their stores - such as at Shanghai Fashion Week - didn’t align with their company identity. We wanted to capture this trailblazing energy with a contemporary concept that the brand could use to reflect their playful attitude across all channels.
At the heart of Balabala’s product strategy is the idea of unexpected contrasts and unlimited creativity. Inspired by this direction, we created the new logo from two simple forms - a circle and a rectangle - combined to create bouncy, characterful letters for the wordmark. The two shapes are used together throughout the brand identity, creating a design language of contrasting forms and unexpected pairings which were also incorporated into the wider brand and store design.
Along with a more grown-up logo, we also created a new colour palette with a broader range of colours to sit alongside the signature yellow. Inspired by a world of imagination and fantasy, we named the colours Orange Juice, Blue Sky, Candy Floss and Bubblegum, ensuring the brand remains magical and appealing in everything it does.
With a brand as vibrant as Balabala, the brand palette needed to capture some of that energy. The core logo shapes bounce, tumble, roll and jostle for attention to create the hero logo ident, and are used as playful patterns across all channels, idents and instore. ‘Inflated’ is one of the key principles for the design language, giving us permission to go big with this brand's personality.
The two logo shapes were also used to create a family of friendly characters as new brand assets for children to connect with. The wiggly shape of an octopus and the cheeky character of a monkey are made entirely from the circle and rectangle forms. Googly eyes have been developed from the same circular shape and are becoming so synonymous with the brand that they are being used on product, architecturally and even on store fronts.
The new identity truly brings everything together across all channels, helping Balabala to effectively express their style credentials and position themselves as a true fashion-forward childrenswear brand, appealing to both millennial parents and fashion-conscious kids.
You can read more about how these design principles influenced our redesign of Balabala’s stores here.