A Cork Icon Is Getting a Rebrand. We're the Team Behind It.
19.06.2026 ————-
Some projects land on your desk and you just know. This is one of them.
Blackpool Shopping Centre has been part of Cork city's northside for 25 years. Sitting at the junction of the N20 and the North Ring Road just over a kilometre from the city centre, it's woven into the daily rhythm of one of Cork's most populated communities. It's not just a shopping centre. It's a landmark.
Now, under new ownership since late 2024, Blackpool is being reimagined. And iQ Branding Solutions has been brought on as the end-to-end brand partner to make it happen.
Starting from the beginning
When a client hands you a brief like this, the temptation is to jump straight to visuals. But before a single design decision gets made, there's a more important question to sit with: what does this place actually mean to the people who use it, and what does it need to become?
That's where we started. Understanding Blackpool not just as a retail space, but as a community fixture with 25 years of history behind it. The rebrand had to honour that while giving the centre a visual language fit for the next chapter - modern, confident, and coherent across every single touchpoint.
Building the brand
From that foundation we developed the full visual identity for Blackpool Shopping Centre. New logo. New colour palette. New typography. A complete design system that would carry through everything, from the largest exterior fascia to the smallest interior wayfinding sign.
The before and after tells its own story. What existed was functional but dated - a centre that had outgrown its visual identity without quite realising it. What we designed is a brand with presence. Clean, considered, and built to work at every scale.
Why this stage matters
Brand design isn't always where iQ comes in. More often we're brought on to produce and install signage based on a brand that already exists. But when the opportunity arises to build from the ground up, as it did here, it changes everything that follows. Every decision downstream becomes easier when the foundation is solid.
That foundation is now in place. And the build is about to begin.
