Piloting the Northshore

As an initiative of Economic Development Queensland, Northshore is a major regeneration of an urban precinct on the Brisbane River. Comprising of riverside ports, storage and industrial facilities - it will be transformed into a new master-planned suburb to be completed over the next 20 years.

Sites are now being offered for sale and redevelopment, and are starting to become branded by a variety of property developers as they commence work.

In effect, this branding breaks up the cohesion of the whole site into individual parcels.

During the months of April - May, Cirque du Soleil is holding its newest season on one of the site’s empty allotments. This event is forecast to attract large crowds of new visitors, and has therefore been approached as an opportunity to promote the Northshore brand and provide a much needed temporary wayfinding system.

Here, Dotdash have designed temporary, movable, and changeable signage to provide visitors with direction, as well as paint the centrally located set of warehouses with the Northshore brand in order to visually claim the whole site.

Completed in one week, the warehouses embody the character of the existing site while announcing a vision for the new. Reclaimed shipping containers where also branded in the same fashion and placed at major entry locations.

The primary aim of the strategy was to establish and enhance a sense of Northshore as a precinct, and to expand and strengthen the presence of the brand on the site through signage and re-claimed objects and structures.

Inspiration for the visual language was taken from the site’s maritime history and current industrial state, to develop a signage family to inform and improve the visitor experience of Northshore.

Client Economic Development Queensland
Project Team Mark Ross, Rachel Bateup,
Heath Pedrola & Erin Stromgren.