ABOUT

VISUAL DISSONANCE IN THE MUSICAL WORLD

GAK (Guitars Amps and Keyboards) is an online business with a store in the bustling North Lanes area in the British seaside town of Brighton. This store had a very striking livery and had become a landmark site and destination venue for musicians across Britain. However, the store’s identity was not shared with any of the brand’s other digital assets like their website, YouTube channel or social media.

While GAK was located in the heart of, and steeped in the music-making and vibrant culture of Brighton, nothing about the digital version of their branding reflected this.

So GAK approached The Pull Agency asking for us to progress the look to celebrate their 30th anniversary and unite the identity of their legendary Brighton store and their e-commerce presence.

A SCIENTIFIC APPROACH TO CREATIVE NEW IDENTITIES

New identities for existing brands are not created at Pull in ‘Blue Sky’ sessions, but out of painstaking research and development.

We believe that in order for an identity to ‘tell a better story’ we first need to systematically understand how the brand is already perceived. And if need be uncover it’s core purpose, and ensure the new identity is based on a true definition of the brand’s actual or desired personality. Only after that can our creative team be unleashed to solve the client’s problem.

The brand personality of GAK was therefore defined through quantitative research as well as talking to GAK staff and customers. Using Pull’s own methodology we benchmarked the brand against its peers with a Brand Healthcheck™ and developed a Brand Blueprint™. The Blueprint defined the brands fundamentals – Visions, Purpose, Personality, Promise and Narrative.

DYNAMIC AUDIENCES

An older ‘Rocker’ and - particularly spurred-on by lockdowns - a younger music-maker with a tech approach to making music, often collaborating online from their bedrooms. GAK appealed strongly to both these communities with their history of democratising music making and their roots in Brighton. There was huge affection for the brand.

BRIGHTON

Brighton has been the home of GAK since beginning the business over 30 years ago.
Iconic, historic and symbolic, Brighton emanates creativity and is a melting pot for culture. Forever a hub and source of influence for artists of all kinds, with music being no exception.

Capturing Brighton’s essence and GAK’s deep-rooted love of their home city through an inspiring, creative and experimental identity was key. A pride in being different yet with wide appeal, evoking movement and energy, all culminating in a distinct design solution.

MUSIC EMPORIUM

Our Blueprint defined the brand personality with the creative concept: ‘Music Emporium Brighton’ to reflect a some of that end-of-pier vaudeville feel of Brighton.

It reflects the distinct identity of GAK as a ‘place of wonder’ and its role as more of a marketplace, with a more distinct character than a simple retailer.

In turn this gave us a theme to explore through design. Emporium evokes a sense of curiosity, intrigue and wonder. It implies an eclectic mix and feeling of the unexpected.

THE LOGO

The logo offers simplicity with strength. We looked to achieve cross-genre appeal with a characterful logotype. A modern sans serif base and structure with the addition of serif elements influenced by and sympathetic to the theme of Emporium and vintage typography.

The marque is the representation of sound. The sound wave emanates from the ‘K’, like a speaker pumping out music, emitting energy and movement. The logo marque also acts as a supporting graphic device throughout the visual identity.

THE KALEIDOSCOPE

Music has become democratised through technology. Like never before, music genres are more fluid and experimental leading to a vibrant, rich kaleidoscope of artists and sounds.

And that word kaleidoscope really resonated with us, especially as we explored themes based around Brighton, it’s historic seafront and pier.

The characteristics of a kaleidoscope represent many similarities with music, with it’s mixing and converging nature and ‘genre-bending’, portraying a sense of an evolving and developing style.

We wanted to Imagine the musician at the centre with a world of creativity, opportunity and imagination before them on their musical journey to ‘find their sound’.

The series of bespoke Kaleidoscope artworks we created hark back to the vibrant attractions on Brighton Pier, but also suggest a blend of contemporary sounds and instruments.

DEPARTMENTS

The kaleidoscope, whilst developing a powerful and distinctive style, also gave us the opportunity to play with different iterations to represent the vibrancy of the GAK offering. New artworks were created to symbolise the different departments throughout the store and online with its eclectic mix of instruments.

DIGITAL

The lion’s share of GAKs revenue comes from its online operation. As such, its digital presence needed to pack a punch. The new brand gave us the toolkit to deliver a distinct, yet user-friendly experience both on desktop and mobile.

Social media activity was front of mind when developing the identity components, offering a strong, characterful mix of graphic styles and elements to bring channels to life.

STORE

The iconic store and its staff needed to be imbued with the energy and positivity of the new brand, solidifying them as brand advocates and cementing its place as a destination for musicians. Uniquely, Brighton’s planners are relaxed about store decoration, and a mammoth redesign of the store exterior is underway.

IMPACT

Despite an initial reaction of ‘shock and awe’ from the client, the new identity was immediately and wholeheartedly embraced. The new designs came at a sensitive time as GAK were negotiating an investment from Risk Capital Partners run by well-known entrepreneur and restaurant chain builder Luke Johnson. The investment was spurred on by the re-design – at that time finished but not deployed – and was completed shortly after. Luke Johnson is now chairman of GAK.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:

“In late 2020 we approached Pull with a brief to modernise and evolve the well loved and hugely recognisable GAK brand. This was understandably quite a daunting project but we felt the timing was right, we wanted to build on the carefully curated brand value we have been afforded by our loyal customers over the past 30 years. We saw this
not as a rebrand but a brand evolution project with the aim of offering people a new and enhanced brand experience that better represented our energetic, exciting, inclusive and specialist offering.

We tasked Pull with getting to the heart of what drives GAK and our customers, where we have come from and where we hope to go, and to bring all that to life with a brand identity that could speak to music makers, players and people who share our passion for music across a broad spectrum.

The discovery and creative process with Pull was very useful, insightful and exhaustive. Through multiple workshops, surveys, research and design brief iterations they uncovered the GAK brand core values and understood our customers and our aspirations. This attention to detail in the early stages of the project enabled them to build a strong understanding and foundation from which to develop a really exciting and engaging new brand identity for us.

We are very pleased and proud of the new face of GAK that Pull has created with us and I am so pleased to see how warmly and positively it has been received by all the GAK team, customers and suppliers alike”.

Max McKellar
Managing Director
GAK