Clive Piercy, Design Icon and Brand Designer Collaboration
Clive would have been 66 years old on May 29, 2021
Clive was hilarious, he was a design legend. He was an author, a design educator, and shared his talents for four decades in London and Los Angeles. Clive was a British expat that embraced everything LA. He was noted for his use of typography, his color sense, his visual wit, and for bringing a British sensibility to the California aesthetic. Clive was a renowned art teacher, he designed album covers for Elton John and Julian Lennon, and was the art director for Roxy and Quicksilver. Paul Smith was one of his bffs and whenever we saw Clive he was wearing colorful socks and a navy cashmere sweater.
In 2017, we approached Clive and his team at Air-conditioned Media LA (the amazing combo of Clive with Hilary, Carol and John) to create a brand design for us. Back then, much of the beauty branding was monotone, subtle, maybe with some pink, some white and a slight touch of color, easy on the eye. For team KAIBAE, most beauty branding felt a bit sleepy or snooty.
KAIBAE’s homework for Clive…”Could he and his team create branding that sings and dances and reflects the joy and colors of the communities and regions where we work in Africa? How could they make the meaning of KAIBAE which = hello, how are you, are you well? in Kusaal, come to life?”
We wanted KAIBAE to be uplifting, modern, and different. From there the KAIBAE design evolved with our KAIBAE wallpaper, the K’s, graphics and saturated color. The pure potent wild in the logo was actually Clive’s personal handwriting!
