In the 25+ years since its inception, Vista has become a world leader in cinema management software, helping more than half of the world’s cinemas* deliver the best moviegoer experience.

We developed our on-premise brand back in 2013, prior to the group’s IPO, and our 2021 move to Vista Cloud was a natural window for a brand refresh. It was an opportunity to embrace the seismic transformation this move represents and showcase our company-wide commitment to change in our overall brand experience.

Staying true to our purpose to empower a world of cinema, we’ve worked hard on Vista Cloud, a game-changer for our customers. We take on the heavy lifting of providing the infrastructure so cinemas can focus on running their business.

Vista Cloud has impacted the entire company; from the way we write our software, offer it, deploy it, upgrade it, support it, and account for it, right down to the skills our People & Culture team are looking for when recruiting new talent.

The long journey to refresh our brand

It’s clear by now Vista Cloud is not just another product we’ve launched. As a new generation of reliable and scalable cinema software, it gave us the opportunity to start fresh and completely redesign the end-to-end experience.

We formed a super team to tackle this challenge, to truly represent how present and future Vista looks, feels, and acts. Spanning across departments and Vista Group companies, Paula Moody, Creative Lead, led this team, including strategic partners like Holly Jones, Head of Marketing, Mark Pattie, VP of Product, Tiga Seagar, Product Design Director, and Tristan Phipps, Head of Design (UX).

After interviewing key stakeholders to inform the brief, it was evident we needed to clearly signal Cloud as a new generation of Vista. The brand needed to support and establish trust as a core tenet of our business. It also needed to present the complexity of our offering in a simple, digestible, and relevant form.

We began with a proposal to focus on simplicity, scalability, and accessibility to kick off broader conversations. We quickly realised we needed a flexible design system to support rapid change within Vista on an ongoing basis. The system should also enable different cinema roles to explore Vista Cloud capabilities in a way that is suitable to their needs — empowering users to engage with Vista their way.

Say hello to the new us

We've aimed to create a cohesive brand experience across every touchpoint, from marketing materials to user experience. We considered every aspect of our brand in relation to our goal — the creation of a single consistent design system for Vista. From our product offering, brand architecture, market positioning, and tone of voice, to supporting assets such as logos, colours, and typography, all elements now work together as a unified whole.

Here are some of the changes we’ve made:

Logo: Vista

Vista is the name our customers and the cinema industry already commonly use for us. So, while our legal company name remains Vista Entertainment Solutions, we now simply call ourselves Vista in our communications. In alignment with our simplicity pillar, refining and removing extraneous details like this brings us closer to our goal of making the Vista brand experience as easy-to-understand as possible.

The Vista logo now has a little more spacing between letters to let them breathe and to increase readability at smaller scales.

Purpose: empowering a world of cinema

Our primary brand message unites us. It’s why we do what we do and is our aspirational vision — if we are the very best version of ourselves, this is what we would achieve. Ultimately, this is what we want you, our customers, and the industry to recognise us for.

Tagline: we love cinema

The tagline is our secondary brand message. It represents who we are and underpins our values.  

Like our customers, we’re in this business for the love of a shared, immersive experience like nothing else. Cinema is where strangers come together and enjoy the art of storytelling at its finest.

‘We love cinema’ is personal because we really do. We hire on the basis of loving cinema, it’s our core driver, and it’s what unites us as a company.

Favicon: heart

Our favicon is reflective of who we are and how we make our mark in the cinema industry. We do it because we love cinema. Within the heart shape is a nod to cinema tickets overlapping.

The favicon is not intended to be paired with our Vista logo. Instead, it holds its own place in our brand narrative, alongside our tagline. It’s fresh, modern, and scalable enough for the heart to be visible as a 16px favicon.

Colour

Our focus on simplicity and scalability means we no longer use different colour ways to tell our brand story at corporate versus product levels, since these are one and the same. This means we can rapidly add new innovations to our offering without requiring a brand exercise, and we can focus on creating an accessible experience for all — particularly those with colour-blindness or visual impairments.

Generous use of white space, combined with blue as our primary colour, make our whole brand experience easier on the eyes. Orange remains a core (recognisable) colour of the Vista brand but, for the sake of accessibility, we use it as an accent colour. Orange gives the palette some contrast and vibrancy when needed, but doesn't dominate.

Tone of voice

Our tone of voice is the way we tell our story and informs the language we use. Simply put, it’s the character of our organisation coming through words, whether written or spoken. The way Vista sounds is just as important as the way it looks.

These are the five principles we use to guide our tone of voice:  

• Authentic – we use language in its simplest form so everyone understands. It’s comprehensible, even for non-native English speakers.
• Trustworthy - as reflected by our industry expertise, market share, and brand equity, you can rely on us to make the best decisions for your cinema.
• Compelling - we know our stuff and we work with the best to provide first-class technology and services to cinemas. Our language reflects this.
• Empathetic – we build genuine relationships, fully aware that each customer has unique needs and challenges. Our empathy is the foundation for each software capability we build to help achieve your goals.
• Uplifting – we celebrate our customers and industry successes, we’re proud of our achievements, and we have a bullish attitude towards the future of cinema.  

Product: Vista Cloud

The Vista Cloud user experience is based on insights from extensive customer interviews about how the ideal software behaves and how customers want to interact with it. Moving everything into one platform, one login, for a consistent experience gives users the simplicity they were craving.  

Balancing intuitive flows and convenient interactions with design scalability is our greatest triumph. With more than 3000 systems settings available to IT administrators with God-like powers, Vista Cloud is designed to provide an enjoyable experience for all users no matter their access level. Increased usability was also the goal behind integrating new specialised feedback messages and adding more undo options for users to change their minds or cancel an action.

Cinema operators open Vista in dark rooms with poor lighting and on small screens and this pushed accessibility at the top of our priorities. Vista Cloud is easy to use, with higher contrast, evident elements, and a new font for improved readability.  

This is just the beginning. As we continue to engage our users for feedback, we will further refine the design and user experience for Vista Cloud customers.

The next chapter for Vista

You can see these exciting new changes out in the wild now on our social media, website, merchandise, presentations, and in-product for Vista Cloud and Vista Digital.  

To learn more about our rebrand and what it means for the future, join us at CineEurope or book a meeting with one of our team members. If you’re a partner or media collaborator, we’ve also created a media toolkit with the latest assets.

We couldn’t be more grateful to have you along on the journey with us.

‍

*Cinemas with 20+ screens excluding China