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corporate design hafencity (rework)

hafencity reloaded

The design of HafenCity Hamburg, Europe's largest urban development project, goes back to 2001, when HafenCity was just a masterplan. That has changed a lot: The plans have transformed into a bustling neighbourhood where 3,000 people live and 12,000 work. This isn't the only reason why the design was completely overhauled after 15 years.

The redesign was done in close consultation with the management team. They wanted to keep things simple, clear and modern without changing the established identity. The idea was also to make the brand identity look more forward-thinking, sustainable and likeable.

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We've created a design system that makes it easy to differentiate between media for different target groups. The new design makes it clear that HafenCity is a vibrant, contemporary place.


We want to make the design more open, modern and, most importantly, more flexible so we can differentiate between target groups and addressees with a clear concept.


We want to make things emotional where it makes sense and keep things factual and technical where it's appropriate. We also want to show the diversity that characterises HafenCity.

The redesign objectives are the same for all brand logos: 


Simplicity, clarity and a design that works well in both analogue and digital channels. 

That's why we modified both the image and the word mark. We also worked on the nuances of the two interlocking waveforms, making small and subtle changes to the individual 'shapes' to give the logo a little more variance and vibrancy.


To make everything consistent, we also used CAMPTON in the word mark and introduced capitalisation in the logo to make it more emotional.


The former HafenCity colours were based on the colours of the Hanseatic City of Hamburg. In the pitch, we reworked orange and grey and added a light blue to the dark blue, replacing red with magenta. The overall colour scheme became friendlier and more modern.

the corporate design in use