Corporate Design HafenCity
HafenCity Reloaded
The design of HafenCity Hamburg, Europe's largest urban development project, was first started in 2001. At that time, HafenCity was just a masterplan. That has changed a lot: The plans have turned into a busy neighborhood where 3,000 people live and 12,000 work. That's not the only reason why the design was completely overhauled after 15 years.
We worked closely with the management team on the redesign. 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.
We've come up with a design system that makes it a breeze 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 clearly differentiate between target groups and addressees.
We want to make things emotional when it makes sense and factual and technical when it's appropriate. We also want to show the diversity that characterizes HafenCity.
The goals for redesigning the logos are the same for all brands:
It's simple, clear, and works well in both analog and digital.
That's why we tweaked both the image and the word mark. We also worked on the details of the two interlocking waveforms, making minor adjustments to the individual shapes to give the logo a bit more variety and vibrancy.
To keep everything consistent, we also used CAMPTON in the word mark and introduced capital letters in the logo to make it more emotional.
The old HafenCity colors were based on the colors of the Hanseatic City of Hamburg. In the pitch, we tweaked the orange and grey a bit and added a light blue to the dark blue, swapping red for magenta. The overall color scheme became friendlier and more modern.
The corporate design in use:
Publications, posters, and flyers are key to letting people know about HafenCity's ongoing transformation. They take complex urban development processes and break them down into simple, easy-to-understand formats, making it so that ideas, plans, and progress can be seen and understood by a lot of people.
From full-on publications to short flyers and eye-catching posters, every design follows the same basic principles. A structured grid, precise typography, and a reduced visual language make everything clear and consistent. The system can also adapt to different themes, scales, and parts of the project.
Publications provide deeper insights into districts, concepts, and long-term visions, combining informative texts with strong imagery and well-balanced layouts. Posters and flyers, on the other hand, are all about immediacy — they highlight key messages, events, or milestones in a direct and engaging way.
All these formats together make a clear communication system that helps HafenCity both in-depth and in the moment. They document change, guide through complexity, and make the development visible — piece by piece, page by page.
Design that brings ideas into form
