“Terence Conran would say, ‘It’s better for customers if everything is designed with a single pair of eyes and a singular vision,’” says Mark Landini. After starting his career in London and working for the likes of Fitch & Co – and then as creative director of the Conran Design Group – the Sydney-based designer founded Landini Associates with his wife and managing director, Rikki, in 1993. Today they have 24 employees, four children and Chester, a Staffordshire terrier-sheepdog mix, who is the most vocal presence at the firm’s office in Surry Hills.

Over the course of more than 30 years, the studio has become renowned for developing cohesive brands across retail, hospitality, beauty and more. Despite its current standing, however, it had less polished beginnings. The initial idea for the practice came about after a night of drinking. 

Landini, who had long worked for Conran, had been offered a partnership in an architectural design outfit in Sydney but realised within a few weeks that it wasn’t for him. “We bought a couple of bottles of cheap champagne from a shop called Liquorland,” he says. “About two bottles in, I wrote a letter to the managing director of Liquorland and said, ‘Your bottle shops are rubbish. You’ll never have any credibility in wine. You need to start a wine shop.’”

Landini never imagined that he would receive a response but the phone rang within days and a relationship began. This eventually led to him designing the company’s new fleet of wine shops known as Vintage Cellars, then reinvigorating the Liquorland brand. “We had our first clients,” says Landini.

The practice has since become renowned for reviving and reinventing brands, with a broad church of clients. Supermarket firms Aldi and Esselunga, fashion labels Glassons and Petit Pli, Australian tea retailer T2, cosmetics brand Jurlique and even McDonald’s are now on Landini Associates’ books. And while the clients and the end products are substantially different, there is a consistent approach across the firm’s creative process.

“We have this thing called the blindfold test,” says Landini. “The idea is that if you were kidnapped, blindfolded and then taken to a brand’s space, you should be able to recognise exactly where you are as soon as the blindfold comes off.” 

The designer explains that to create such a space, his team – regardless of who the client might be – works to build physical spaces that are neutral in form, allowing the product to become the most important element. “If you can find a way of creating an environment that celebrates the product and the brand is immediately recognisable, then you have passed the blindfold test.”

However, the blindfold test is only worthwhile if the brand in question has a clear core idea. “The word ‘brief’ means short and precise. That’s why when you write a brief for a company, it should be brief,” says Landini. 

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Three projects of note

“We don’t have a fixed list of client services,” says Landini. As a result, a job might encompass everything from identity evolution and graphic design to interiors, lighting, signage, packaging and uniforms, as well as the digital experience. What does unite the firm’s projects, however, is the approach taken: identifying a single driving idea, often distilled to a few words. Here we outline three Landini Associates projects to show how the company works across scale, industries and business requirements.

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1.
Esselunga
Supermarket, Italy

Driving idea: ‘Dimmi’
(Italian for ‘tell me’)

“We had worked in Canada for 15 years with Loblaws supermarket, starting with Maple Leaf Gardens, and it introduced us to the Caprottis in Italy,” says Landini. The Caprotti family owns supermarket chain Esselunga, which began in the country’s north and now comprises 192 shops. It also has the highest turnover per square metre of any supermarket globally. 

“It started with the notion of dimmi, which means ‘tell me’ in Italian,” says Landini, explaining that the driving idea for the project was to show the work that goes into Esselunga’s products. “We did this by putting the bakers, pasticceri, salumerie and chefs in a glass box at the front of the shop to expose customers to the wonders of what they do.”

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2.
Jurlique
Cosmetics, Australia

Driving idea: Biodynamic Beauty 

Landini Associates was commissioned by Australian biodynamic skincare company Jurlique to reinvigorate the brand. “We started by visiting its flower farm in South Australia,” says Landini. “It was obvious to me that if it wanted to make the brand big, it had to celebrate the smallness of it – to tell the story of the biodynamic farm.” The Landini team went on to create a logo, packaging and shop fit-outs inspired by the shed on the farm.

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3.
McDonald’s
Fast food, USA

Driving idea: Make McDonald’s cool again

Landini Associates developed “Project Ray”, which has been rolled out over the past 10 years. The first shop to be overhauled as part of the initiative was the Admiralty Station outpost in Hong Kong. One of the busiest McDonald’s locations in the world, it serves an astonishing 1,200 customers per hour.

“The brief was basically to make McDonald’s cool for millennials,” says Landini, who made a point of developing uniforms that would be equally at home in a nightclub and on the production line. “We also changed the furniture and turned the lights down.”