Barques designs branding for Edgbaston Village's artisan market

Barques was approached to deliver enticing and eye-catching branding to help the new market to stand out, having previously worked with Calthorpe Estates to promote various properties in its portfolio.

Located just one mile from Birmingham City Centre, Edgbaston Village is a growing leisure and lifestyle destination and a hotspot of stylish and vibrant places to wine, dine and shop.

The affluent suburb boasts a mixture of classical heritage properties, world-class educational establishments, leading medical facilities, and internationally recognised sports and leisure venues, including the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, a Michelin-starred restaurant, and a range of other fine dining establishments, bars and cafés.

Edgbaston Village has undergone significant redevelopment work over recent years, including enhanced pedestrian access and car parking facilities, to create a more enjoyable destination with the community at its heart. 

Part of this redevelopment included the introduction of a monthly artisan market in Greenfield Crescent, as a means of enticing a greater number of visitors to the area.

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Defining the personas

As with any marketing project, it’s crucial to identify who the target audience is from the outset. This helps to define audiences and informs decisions further on in the creative process.

Personas help to understand who you’re talking to, using research and data to represent the different user types that may engage with your service, product or brand. They also provide a deeper understanding of user behaviours and interests, likes and dislikes.

Our creative team produced three personas, based on its extensive research. Each persona had its own interests, hobbies and careers, which reflected the demographics of the area surrounding the market. 

Using this information enabled the team to create a style for each, including a colour palette, typography, design elements and a collection of images that would appeal to the target audience. 

We combined this information into individual stylescapes, which were presented on physical boards to provide an overall visual aesthetic of each potential brand.

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The result

Calthorpe Estates decided on one stylescape that represented everything the market had to offer and the environment it wanted to create. From there, we were able to design a suite of assets for the market based on the chosen look and feel.

Historically Edgbaston is known as “where the trees begin” due to restrictions which prohibited factories and warehouses from being built in the conservation area. With over one million trees, the leafy, natural surroundings of the market played a significant part in the direction of the final look. 

The green colour palette works as a double entendre, recognising the natural surroundings and paying homage to the market's organisers. They also played a part in establishing the nearby Moseley Farmers’ Market, which similarly features the prominent use of green in its branding.

Each element was strategically designed, from the circular logo reminiscent of stickers often used to seal the wrapping of market purchases, to the typography and textures which mirror the artisan nature of the market and the materials found there.

Edgbaston Village Artisan Market has been hugely popular since launching and is now officially recognised as the largest artisan market in the city. Offering a range of locally produced food and drink, handmade arts and crafts, and farmers’ market produce, the market has drawn in thousands of visitors from across Birmingham and beyond. Due to its continued success, the number of stalls has also trebled to 60.

Find out when the next market is - we promise that you won't be disappointed.