One of the UK’s most influential paper companies, GF Smith, have recently unveiled a bright, bold, and future-ready rebrand created by branding agency TEMPLO. The new brand positioning, architecture, and visual identity embodies the business’ heart-held values and its role in the contemporary creative landscape, showcasing GF Smith’s people, culture, values, and purpose. The launch of the rebrand coincides with the unveiling of a brand new website and the introduction of the GF Smith Charitable Trust.
GF Smith’s last major branding project took place in 2014. Since then, the business, the creative sector, and the wider world have seen significant changes. To reflect the shifts in both the business and its market, and align with its plans for international growth, 2025 came as the perfect time for their next rebrand. Ben Watkinson, Global Brand Director, GF Smith, states; “We felt that our visual identity, though much loved inside and outside the company and right for GF Smith at the time, no longer reflected who we were as an organisation or as people, and that it was the right time to change, to create a new energy for the brand and, above all else, to look forward to the future.”
Sharing the belief that branding is about more than just a logo, GF Smith chose to work with TEMPLO, a cause-led branding and communications agency committed to using the positive power of design for social change. Its founder’s, Anoushka Rodda and Pali Palavathanan’s ethos aligned with that of GF Smith, emphasising that the rebrand must embody the brand’s core ideas and values. The founding duo were inspired by the humanity and warmth of GF Smith, its ‘gently radical’ spirit, and the company’s commitment to environmental and social causes. Together, TEMPLO and GF Smith have evolved and elevated the brand, saturating it with energy, colour, playfulness, and positivity. Rodda describes; “By strategically engaging and listening to both internal and external voices, we uncovered the core values of humanity, optimism, creativity, and community that define the GF Smith brand, as well as the gently radical spirit that animates it. The result is a vibrant brand positioning and architecture, and a new visual identity rooted in these principles, which invite audiences to discover the warmth, character, and social conscience that has always been at the heart of GF Smith.”
Working in close collaboration with the GF Smith team at all levels of the business, Rodda and Palavathanan led the rebrand process. Together, they identified three truths that define GF Smith. These then formed the building blocks of the new brand positioning:
1. Why paper? – The tactile pleasure and permanence of paper as a physical material, as opposed to an ephemeral digital product;
2. Why GF Smith paper? – The boundless creative possibilities and vivid colours that define the GF Smith paper collections;
3. Why GF Smith? – The deep sense of community at GF Smith, and its support for its team, its Hull locale, and the creative industries around the world.
Taken together, and encapsulated in the phrase ‘GF Smith. Feel good papers’, these three elements are captured in the visual device of GF Smith’s new omni-directional logo, which transforms the letterforms of the brand name into the eyes and smile of a new wordmark. The arrangement and dimensions of the logo allow it to be deployed at multiple orientations, forming connections to, and relationships with, the content surrounding it. The logo is supported by bespoke sans-serif typeface, GF Smith Homie by Blaze Type, which is friendly and full of personality, while having the versatility and legibility to suit any number of applications in both digital and print.
With a vibrant, high-contrast colour palette that celebrates their renowned Colorplan (now known as GF Smith Colorplan) collection, the rebrand is designed to support the GF Smith brand architecture at all levels, embracing and consolidating the organisation’s sub brands and multiple services. These include its iconic coloured paper Colorplan, the fine-art and digital inkjet paper specialist RK Burt, part of GF Smith, and GF Smith Colorflute.
The branding also encompasses the new GF Smith Charitable Trust, which has been set up to support access to creative education and creative-industry careers for the community in both GF Smith’s home postcode of HU2, the city of Hull, and more widely across the UK. Every year, GF Smith donates 2% of their profits to the GF Smith Charitable Trust. This funding is then distributed through grants or practical resources, aiming to break down barriers to opportunity and ensure that talent and potential are never limited by circumstance.
The introduction of the rebrand also coincides with the launch of their new website at gfsmith.com. The website brings TEMPLO’s vision to full immersive life for GF Smith’s global community, and has added brand new platforms for content sharing, material insight, and industry reflections. Translating the tactile experience of paper into a digital realm is a tough thing to achieve, but Made by ON, the new website’s developers, have excelled. Unexpected animations, expressive typography and immersive textures bring the physical qualities of paper to life on screen, while maintaining optimal performance and usability.
The launch of the new rebrand and site was marked with a film produced by TEMPLO and filmmaker John Ingle, featuring a bespoke score by Fredwave and sculptures by paper artist Nathan Ward. Colourful, abstract and interwoven with captivating animations, the film explores the unique power of creativity as a way to expand our horizons and escape the challenges of our lives, and celebrates paper as the place where every creative journey begins.
The new branding will be introduced through a further dimension as an exciting range of merchandise and apparel, including partnerships with sustainable brands Nalgene and Pangaia (Powered by Pangaia). The profits from sales will add to the 2% of profits that GF Smith contributes to the Charitable Trust annually. This new range of goods also includes an exclusive limited-edition semicircle Smile book, alongside a totally new take on the classic paper swatch: the GF Smith Colorplan carabiner. This wearable swatch can be clipped to bags, desks, or clothes, and hung up in studios, making it useful, accessible and versatile.
GF Smith’s new brand launched with a series of events in London, Manchester and Glasgow, and a programme of international events in early 2025.
Gareth Sheekey, Managing Director, GF Smith, summarises; “As GF Smith continues to lead the UK’s premium paper market and grow internationally, this new identity will play an essential role in extending our global reach and sharing our love for paper with new creative audiences around the world.”
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