Al Forsan International Sports Resort
A gate, a knight, the dunes.Antoni Gerges, Creative Director, Brand & Experiential · AntBrush
A resort in Abu Dhabi for five sports, named for the knights. I gave it its mark, its system and its campaigns.
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Al Forsan means the knights. Al Forsan International Sports Resort put riding, motor sport, shooting, paintball and water sport on one site in Abu Dhabi.
It belongs to PPM, Private Property Management. The identity was approved between December 2008 and March 2009. I led it through AntBrush, my agency.
The manual names three parts. The arch: classic Arab architecture and the peak of a tent; the white space inside it is a knight’s helmet. The wave: the dunes. The knight: a rider with his head cloth and his rifle, coming through the arch.
The line under it all: Where knights rise.
The first manual, of December 2008, carried an earlier logo without the arch. In March 2009 we presented six arches around the same knight; the mark took the gate.
The identity manual has 136 pages: the mark and its grid, colours and type, stationery, advertising and signs. Its colours are one gold and one black.
Five sport centres carry the same mark, each with a line in its own colour: Equestrian, Paintball, Motor Sports, Water Sports, Shooting.
The soft launch put every sport in one picture. The launch campaign, Your gateway to awesomeness, built the arch of the mark as a gate with every sport coming through it.
Hoardings stood around the site while the resort was being built, and the brand stood at an exhibition. The work for the resort ran from 2008 to 2013. PPM came back for its own logo, and for the names and signs of the Conrad Dubai.
The film and the 3D models are made for this portfolio, from the manual’s own drawing of the logo. On this dark ground the logo is in the manual’s version for a black ground: gold.
One mark,
for five sports.
Built here from the identity manual’s own pages and drawing.
The manual
The book of the brand opens where the idea began: the knight, and his place, a gateway and a tent drawn into one arch.
The mark
The wave of the dunes, the arch, and the knight. From the front, they are the logo.
Five centres
The same mark for every sport, with a line in its own colour.
The gateway
In the launch campaign the arch took depth and became a gate. Every sport comes through it.
Six arches,
one knight.
The first manual, of December 2008, carried an earlier logo without the arch. In March 2009 we presented six arches around the same knight; the mark took the gate of option E.
Where
knights rise.
The slogan, and the mark at work, in two pages of the identity manual: an advertising layout, and a signage sample.
Every sport,
at once.
The first campaign put every sport in one picture, then into a brochure, a roll-up for each sport and a drawn map of the resort.
Your gateway
to awesomeness.
The launch campaign built the arch of the mark as a gold gate: one advertisement for the resort, then one for a centre at a time.
On the road,
at the show.
Hoardings ran around the site while the resort was being built, each sport on its own stretch; then the resort’s stand at an exhibition.
The result.
07 · The result
More figures
Centres: the identity manual, section 13. Arches: the logo options deck of 4 March 2009. Years and brands: the agency’s own records.
Creative Director, Brand & Experiential