Media24 has a new look. The media giant’s headoffice on the Cape Town foreshore is undergoing a major revamp, while its brand and corporate identity has been overhauled to reflect the company’s evolution.
“A bold, authoritative new identity signals to the market that we are confident, progressive and ever-evolving,” says CEO Esmaré Weideman. The move is designed to “signal change”, Weideman says, because as a leading publishing group in Africa, Media24 needed to update its brand.
New Media Publishing (a subsidiary of Media24) took charge of the redesign of the logo. Crispian Brown, the group’s creative director, said the identity was built on giving Media24 a single voice and a consistent visual identity.
“Media24 is the largest media company in Africa but it is not consumer-facing in the traditional sense,” says Brown. “You can’t buy it in a shop. This presented a unique challenge. Media24 is a ‘parent’ brand, which owns world-class consumer brands. So in designing the Media24 identity, we needed to represent those characteristics that make up Media24 as a group.”
Brown said key to the brand is simplicity.. “This doesn’t mean that it can’t be fun. Media24 is a world-class, proudly South African success story and we want to continue to celebrate what we do well.”
One of the first places the new Media24 logo will be seen is on the company’s Cape Town foreshore head office building, which is undergoing a major revamp as Naspers celebrates its centenary. It is also a World Design Capital Cape Town 2014 project.
Weideman says the revamping of the building and renaming of the Naspers Centre to the Media24 Centre is “Naspers’s gift to us to commemorate 100 years of publishing excellence since the inception of Die Burger in July 1915”. The building’s redesign will transform the city’s oldest skyscraper to one of the boldest in town, she adds.
The new Media24 logo will be displayed on the west façade of the building and will be unveiled in December to mark the end of Cape Town’s reign as the World Design Capital. It will reach 34m high and stretch 6m wide. The rest of construction is due for completion in July 2015, when Die Burger celebrates its 100th birthday.