Aziza Design- the Lagos Based Design Firm Building South-South Nigeria’s Best Brands
A quick riddle: what does Port Harcourt’s largest luxury event Centre, two of her fastest-rising restaurant brands, the city’s sweetest confectionery chain, and Uyo’s premier innovation hub have in common?
Tucked in what is now a famous corner of New GRA, at No. 45, King Perekule Street is Buns and Batter – a sit-in Bakery and Bistro in the ever-moving metropolis that is Port Harcourt. A new foodie favorite, Buns and Batter is adored by locals and understandably so – What is not to love? One customer reminiscing on her first visit was enchanted by the space; “It has a very cool and cozy ambience. I especially loved how as evening grew they switched lights to cozy overhead lamps. It gave the restaurant a really fancy and intimate look. It’s a really beautiful space”. This sentiment is shared by a lot of their customers, a list that includes Musician, Timi Dakolo, Reality TV Star, Tobi Bakre, amongst others.
Buns and Batter, Port Harcourt
Co-founded by the duo – Chuma Anagbado and Obinali Okoli, Aziza Design has been in the business of design since 2014, and even before then. Armed with its ideals, passion and a diverse team of Designers, Developers, Architects, Creators and Consultants led by Chuma Anagbado, its Managing Partner/ Co-founder. Time and time again the team, has consistently pushed the boundaries in designing solutions that helps large Corporations and SMEs in the Public Service and Private Sector drive efficiency and organic growth. Under his direction, the firm has pioneered new ways of design consulting that has seen it partner with global brands like Heineken, Stanbic IBTC, First Consultant Medical Centre, The Goethe Institute, amongst others.
Often, good works speak for themselves and this is the story of the firm’s foray into the South-South design market. The creations Aziza Design is birthing in the South-South is an imprint of the firm’s overarching mission to collaboratively develop design solutions inspired by our cultures, our people, latent needs and technology.
From Buns and Batter, a five minutes’ drive to 14 Tombia Street, will bring you to the very heart of G.R.A. and you will find it pumping with color, fun, and a tasty looking ambience. This is Sweet Tooth Confectioneries – one of the happiest places in Port-Harcourt. According to a customer’s review, “The most beautiful aspect about this place is that they have (an) outside sit-out section and a field and swings which children can play and have much fun”. First impression matters, and Sweet Tooth’s Brand Identity is another brainchild of Aziza Design. Within five minutes of each other, two businesses in same city are thriving and they are both a testament of a single source – Aziza Design, whose design spark has now struck the same city, twice…
No! More than twice.
These would not be Aziza Design’s first or latest creation in the city. In fact, another five minutes cab trip downtown to GRA Phase III, at F11 Sani Abacha Street will bring you to a sprawling landmass harboring EUI Centre – Port Harcourt’s 5-Star event Centre hosting the most high-profile events the city has to offer. From Brand identity to organizational design, process design and merchandising, the EUI Centre is a marvel to behold.
EUI Centre
On the night of EUI Centre’s launch, attendees got to learn that the inspiration behind the new city landmark is the famous French City State of Monaco. The design task was to translate the experiences of world-class hospitality in a city considered to host some of the world’s wealthiest into a luxury event Centre in Nigeria’s garden city. To build this vision, the trusted design consultant throughout the process has been Aziza Design.
At this point, the pattern has drawn itself. Port Harcourt‘s upstarts are turning to one single source for design thinking and solutions development.
Just three hours from this city, another creative and impressionable mind is entering into CodeKago – a premier full-service digital agency in Uyo and the coolest workspace in the South-South Nigeria. She is marveling at the unusual naming convention applied to the space and how seamless the interior space seems to blend together. She is comfortable calling the workspace ‘Dom’, the toilet ‘debug’, and the nap space ‘flexbox’. She smiles because this is a language, she is fluent in. She will ask the first person she meets about who created this interactive interior space and they will answer – like so many other new, brilliant businesses in the South-South, Aziza Design. Nigeria’s first multidisciplinary design consultancy and the design giant spurning a brand revolution in the South-South.
Besides the listed above, Cream Town Confectioneries is a representation of this vision in G.R.A. Benin City, and Meal Boss is another restaurant and outdoor catering company in Port Harcourt that stands as a bold testimony to the genius of this design firm.
Aziza Design’s creative spark has become an inferno lighting up South South’s new brands and making them shine brilliantly. Proverbially, lightening has struck in the same place multiple times now and hurricane Aziza shows no sign of slowing down, who knows where next.