Make Malls Fun Again
Neighbourhood malls (unsurprisingly) serve the community of residents living around them. I see them as the typical cookie-cutter malls, albeit smaller in size. As their tenant mix aren't out of the ordinary, it's unlikely that Singaporeans would travel across the island to such malls when they can just go to their nearest neighbourhood mall.
OneKM was one such mall. Located a few streets away from Paya Lebar MRT, its visitors were likely from around the area. Recently, with competition from new malls such as SingPost Centre and the upcoming Paya Lebar Quarter, OneKM needed to step up its game to ensure its footfall does not suffer.
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| "Why walk under the sun to OneKM when I can just cross the street to SingPost Centre?" |
As such, OneKM hit the reset button in August and out from the ashes came something niche and exciting - now known as Kinex, this mall offers several retail concepts which are new to Singapore. These include an indoor retail theme park
comprising individual experiential zones and experiential workshops by The Green Collective, Singapore’s first green lifestyle concept store.
How did we get here? First, let's examine One KM's branding.
OneKM's branding: False Excitement
The old logo was weird to say the least. The letters in the wordmark did not follow any pattern but I could see that the outlines were trying to inject energy into what I presumed was a dead mall.
The logo's colours had much potential to be the highlight of the design because of the font used, but grey and orange gave conflicting messages, making the logo appear dull. Strangely, the mall's sign features a blue/orange combination which works better than the official one, or it could just be a camera colour issue. Either way, this showed that a simple colour change could have made the logo more appealing.
For OneKM's slogan/tagline, we have the incredibly vague "Mall + more" and "making wellness one-derful". Wow, somebody actually got paid for these ideas. Did they even try?
Kinex: Younger Now
-UOL Deputy Group CEO Liam Wee Sin
Kinex's logo is still a wordmark, but that's as far as similarities go between this and OneKM's logo. The logo is vibrant and playful, arguably more kid-friendly than United Square's logo, perhaps because of its colour palette. On the mall's site, you can see the new colour palette being put to good use, and a fun and youthful visual identity shines through.
According to the press release, Kinex is a combination of kinetics and experience, which explains the floating words and squiggle graphics on the site.
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| They might appear messy when presented without context, but they fit well with the site |
Kinex also has an icon-mascot thing going on, which is basically the "x" in Kinex coming to life.
Interestingly, this icon was already in use when Kinex was still known as OneKM, possibly to give a sneak peek of the rebrand that was to come.
In fact, from 1 April to its official rebrand on 1 September, the mall's social media posts started to follow Kinex's brand look.
Colourful confetti eventually made way for the squiggles after the rebrand.
Whether you love this identity or think it's too childish for a mall, there's no denying that its brand identity and application are solid pieces of work which sends a cohesive and strong message of what it stands for - a place for people to play. Be it through shopping at the retail theme park or participating in unique communal events, Kinex hopes its offerings would allow people to experience, excite and explore the passions.
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