The Plant's beautiful and very clever movement-inspired Art Central identity

The white marquee walls and immaculate dressers within them at big art fairs feel at odds with anything “frenetic,” but it’s movement and dynamism that have driven the design concept for Art Central’s identity, and boy does it work. London agency The Plant is behind the energy-inspired identity, having worked on similar projects including creating the branding for Art Hong Kong and London Fair Art 15. Art Central is a new fair for Hong Kong launching this month, and cleverly takes the Chinese character for “Central” ( 中 ) as its, well, centre.

The glyph is split into a brightly-coloured grid that can be pulled apart and slotted together for its myriad applications, and the slick new site, also designed by The Plant, animates the identity so that the Chinese mark appears before the English word mark. Very clever.

“[The client] wanted the identity to be really fresh,” says Matt Utber, The Plant founder. “The whole idea was to reflect that sense of the city as it’s really energetic – there’s just a buzz about the whole place. The grid seemed really appropriate with the idea of movement and direction.”