Mandai's rebrand frames every message in leaves, like the open zoo itself

Unify a 300-acre nature reserve of wildlife parks, an eco-resort and a conservation foundation — including Singapore Zoo and Jurong Bird Park — with 50 years of zoology behind it, and encourage people to engage with biodiversity and wildlife protection.

Frame every piece of communication in leaves from the simpoh air shrub, so information appears the way animals do in the open zoo: glimpsed through the foliage.

Anak built a 'tropical frame' graphic from leaves of the native simpoh air shrub to house information, wrote tone-of-voice guidelines and a 'Come to Life' tagline, and worked with type foundry Colophon on the bespoke Mandai Value Serif — a softer, rounder version of Value Serif with characterful kinks that suits needs from corporate governance to a children's book. It rolls out across tone of voice, photography and colour palettes.

The identity unified the wildlife group's parks and materials and aimed to redress perceptions of Singapore as only man-made; the source reports no visitor figures.

Singapore-based studio Anak rebranded Mandai Wildlife Group, the 300-acre nature reserve comprising wildlife parks, an eco-resort and a conservation foundation, including Singapore Zoo and Jurong Bird Park. The team brought personal attachment to these deeply loved national institutions and an awareness of Mandai's epic-scale biodiversity ambitions.

The rebrand leans on what made Singapore Zoo famous: the 'open zoo' concept. Where zoos worldwide were concrete and barred cages, Singapore decided in the 1970s to design barriers from natural elements such as hedges and moats — a sense of being among the animals that now shapes the brand's graphic core.

That idea became the 'tropical frame': an information framework composed of leaves from the simpoh air, a native evergreen shrub of swampy areas, providing what the designers called an instant shorthand for rainforest foliage — built to recreate looking up and around, through the canopy, spotting a free-ranging orangutan or a tiger through the trees.

Anak also crafted tone-of-voice guidelines and the tagline 'Come to Life', and worked with type foundry Colophon on the bespoke Mandai Value Serif — inspired by Value Serif's warmth and clarity, then made slightly softer and more organic, with thicker, rounder letterforms and characterful kinks that break the stiffness of a typical serif. A T-shirt reading 'Just another creature' sums up the ambition: humans and animals on equal footing, and a Singapore known for more than its man-made icons.

The tropical frame turns the zoo's founding design decision — natural barriers — into a functional graphic system.

A bespoke serif that spans corporate reports and children's books matches an institution that is both a business and a classroom.

'Just another creature' compresses the equal-footing positioning into merchandise people actually wear.

Derive the identity system from the institution's founding experience — here, glimpsing animals through hedges — and the design explains the place by itself.

The identity rolled out across the group's touchpoints; the source reports no follow-up figures.