Billingsgate Fish Market is the largest inland fish market in the UK and S&A Hart have had a stall there since 1978.

S&A Hart only sell prawns, crab and lobster and are one of the biggest suppliers of (giant!) prawns in the market.

The business has evolved and changed ownership in recent years. Now S&A Hart wanted a bolder, more modern look, to better reflect their prawn, crab and lobster specialism, the change in management and to make a bit of noise amongst their fellow traders.

The new identity is inspired by warehouse style graphics that reflect the industrial environment, and hints of sporting badges to reflect the energy and youth of the new team.

The result is a solid and robust looking logo mark, with clean typography and strong colours. The typography has been crafted to exaggerate the curves of the letter forms and to create little pincer shape details inspired by seafood.

The new strapline highlights the businesses expertise, proudly celebrating its location and origin at Billingsgate.

With much to say about the attitude of the business, a range of icons and secondary marks communicate key messages in a vibrant, playful way – always confident but never boastful.

The overlaid design elements bring a touch of warehouse stencil style, in a warm colour palette that’s in keeping with the human tone of the brand.

The playful brand approach builds, with wit and humour in the language to be memorable and create become talking points. Vintage sports style of graphics build as the range does, working with the main logo to support the quality and expertise proposition.

The core brand icon is affectionally known Frankencrab.

Designed to reflect S&A Hart’s specialism and expertise in prawn, crab and lobster, he is carefully crafted from all three.

The market stall is the home of the business and where most of the business is done.

In a sea of white signs, white walls and lab coats, the S&A Hart identity is a bold burst of orange and blue to stand out in the market especially in the area known as ‘prawn corner’.

The new identity is designed to do more than stand out. A large proportion of customers are Asian retailers, fishmongers and restauranteurs, often where English isn’t the first language.

Building on the warm personality and welcoming nature of the people in the business, core product signage is displayed in Hindi, Urdu and Chinese. A simple touch but unique in the market.

Branded teamware amplifies the friendliness of the team with vintage sports inspired slogans – the Prawn Stars, Crab Kings and Lobster Legends of Billingsgate.

Embracing customers where English isn’t the first language a step further, we designed an image led order book with simple instructions on Hindi, Urdu and Chinese. Customers simply take a picture of the product and send to a dedicated WhatsApp number with the quantity and delivery date needed. Another simple, but effective tool to alleviate any friction in the order process that builds trust and loyalty at the same time.

The large majority of customers are trade but Billingsgate is also open to the public every day, for those prepared to shop before 7am!

Part of the brief was to encourage more individual customers to the stall. Our insights uncovered that people can be intimidated by the idea of visiting Billingsgate. It’s noisy, busy, full of traders and trade buyers and prices are all in kilos.

By installing Kane Xinaris, one of the business principles, as the face of the social media campaign, we have generated over 500,000 views and counting on TikTok in just a few months!