When a large, southern-based developer enters a city as proud as Leeds, trust has to be earned. Aire Park needed an idea strong enough to carry a 50-year scheme and flexible enough to speak to residents, workers, business leaders and the city at once.
Vastint asked KISS to create an identity for Aire Park: Leeds’ largest new public green space, set within a mixed-use district of homes, offices, culture and leisure on the South Bank. It had to work across signage, wayfinding, communications and the built environment, and hold its integrity for decades as the scheme grew.
The real task was a perception problem, not a design brief. A large developer from the south was reshaping a corner of a city with a strong sense of itself — one that has every reason to be wary of development that lands, extracts and leaves.
Working with Vastint through strategy sessions and on-site immersion, one thing became indisputable: the park was the scheme’s defining factor. Not a feature among many, but the thing that made everything around it better. Wellbeing for office workers, respite for passers-by, pride for locals, long-term value for the city. Leeds has almost no green space in its centre; this corrected that.
That gave us the idea everything else is built from: Stronger by Nature. Read two ways; the literal green space that elevates the whole district, and the character of Leeds: resilient, resourceful, proud. A position rooted in something real on the ground, not imposed on it.
It reframed the whole scheme. A large developer project in South Leeds became a part of the city under careful, long-term stewardship, open to everyone, not just paying tenants.
Stronger by Nature had to hold across audiences who would never read the brand the same way, without fracturing into different brands. The system was built to flex from a single fixed point.
The Aire Park monogram, the AP mark, is the foundational asset from which everything else follows: language, layout, wayfinding, supporting illustration. An icon designed to last decades, literally etched into the stone of the place.
In the public realm the identity opens up, warm, expressive, made to invite participation and everyday use. In commercial contexts it tightens, holding quality and confidence for the park-side offices without losing the family resemblance. Cultural programming and community activity on one side; premium residential and corporate letting on the other. A colour palette that holds Leeds’ industrial grit against its green public space; typography that balances contemporary clarity with heritage warmth.
One idea speaks to a resident, an investor and the council and stays recognisably itself across all three. That’s what a scheme spanning decades and audiences needs from its brand.
Aire Park is now understood less as a large developer project landing in South Leeds and more as a considered part of the city. Clarity on what the scheme was and who it was for, established early, before the buildings completed, reduced uncertainty, built recognition and gave occupiers, agents and the public a coherent picture to work from.
The brand has helped attract occupiers to the office buildings and shaped how the district is talked about: as an open, shared part of Leeds rather than a private development.