Kimpton Creative rebrands iconic Portuguese tourist destination

Portugal dos Pequenitos – which translates to ‘Portugal for the Little Ones’ – sought the help of the London-based agency to create a new brand narrative. Following on from a major redevelopment of the park, Kimpton Creative developed a new brand strategy which included a logo modernisation.

Based in the city of Coimbra, the tourist attraction is an architecture park which contains replicas of traditional Portuguese homes, famous Portuguese monumental buildings and pavilions representing Portugal’s former colonies. Since opening in 1940, the attraction has become a place where adults and children can learn about the country’s history around the world.

The project initially began in 2019 as the park was due to open 13 new exhibition galleries. With Covid delaying the process, the new identity has only just been launched. Kimpton Creative won the project against six competing agencies after opting to embody the founder’s phrase, “make the children of our land happy”, in its creative process.

Utilising the joy of children exploring, discovering and having fun would inform much of the agency’s work. The project was also informed by the visual narrative ‘timelessly exploring fun-sized culture’, which was created with brand strategist Amanda Yensa Manor.

David Kimpton, founder of Kimpton Creative, says, “'Timelessly exploring fun-sized culture’ summarises what the park is about. Exploration is central to much of the park, starting with the Portuguese explorers of the 1500s, but it also represents exploring the park itself. 'Fun-sized' was key for us, as the park’s uniqueness is the perfect scaling down of all the buildings.”

Given the iconic nature of its logo, the agency decided to modernise it rather than completely redesign. The new identity sees a pattern used which encompasses the wide variety of houses, buildings, statues and cultural objects amongst which children and families explore, discover and learn.

Elsewhere, Kimpton Creative designed retail products, tickets and uniform for Portugal dos Pequenitos. The agency was also responsible for designing identity guidelines which informed the brand’s tone of voice and visual language for its interactive exhibitions.

Kimpton adds, “'Fun-sized’ also encompasses our approach to the tone, capturing one of their values: joy. We were keen to play with scale but also capture the joy of children running around exploring and discovering things. None of this had been captured in the previous visual language. There was very little in common with their different promotions – a mishmash of styles with a logo stuck in the corner.”

Kimpton Creative is set to design a new standalone website that aims to show off the joy of the attraction as well as creating advertising in 2023 to promote the park’s new visitor experiences.