The Slide at the Arcelormittal Orbit

Designed by German artist Carsten Höller at the invitation of Sir Anish Kapoor, the 40 second trip along the 178m slide was named as Time Out London’s number 1 ‘Thing to do this year’.

After working on a number of successful projects with the LLDC, they asked me to create an identity for the newest attraction in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park—The Slide at the Arcelormittal Orbit—the longest and tallest tunnel slide in the world.

The brief set out the need for an identity that would fulfil a number of different requirements; being distinct whilst sympathetic to the existing identity for the ArcelorMittal Orbit; appealing to a range of audiences including children, tourists and potential corporate sponsors; something that would work in a graphical sense as both a headline and a footnote; and would work for communications varying from corporate to merchandising—a key consideration for a tourist destination.

From looking at the architectural plans I could see that in some places the shapes of the slide formed a graphic S, and this formed the basis of the identity. What started out as a literal scribble on the back of an envelope was revised and developed into a more fully formed solution which reflects both the curving nature of the slide, and the two sections of its construction. The bottom, which is a solid surface, and the top, which represents the windows in the roof of the slide that give riders ever changing flashes of the colours and shapes of the skies of London as they shoot down the slide.

The result was an infinitely flexible identity system that can be tailored to every audience, across every communication channel.

In Adam I have found the perfect design partner who is able to work as an extension of our brand team.

He understands our overarching strategy and challenges, delivers great quality work and always goes the extra mile.

Ines Rios
Senior Brand Manager
Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park