Situated in the historical city of Iasi, Northeastern Romania, the Palas Iasi project is the largest real estate complex in Southeastern Europe, backed up by a 260 million EUR investment. The project was developed by Iulius Group, the largest mall operator and developer in Romania. The “city within the city” includes residential and commercial buildings, business spaces and different entertainment destinations.
Bucharest, August 2012
On the opening day 12,740 lanterns bearing the Palas Iasi logo designed by Brandient flew over the city center, the event entering The Guinness World Record for the largest number of simultaneously-launched sky lanterns. Photo courtesy Palas Iasi.
Brandient was commissioned to conceive the brand strategy for Palas and to create the visual identities for Palas Iasi, Palas Mall and United Business Centre.
After 2008, the deflated real estate boom was not a fertile ground for visionary branding. In spite of this, the uniquely grand Palas Iasi project set itself to change Iasi into a destination brand for Europeans.
—Aneta Bogdan, Managing Partner Brandient
The visual identity of Palas Iasi reflects the project’s sophisticated nature, using contemporary design accents. The new logo and its manifestations are meant to create a modern, European brand able to provide visitors, city inhabitants and employees with inspiration, happiness and optimism.
The three Class A buildings of the business center were unveiled in 2010. In tune with the cosmopolitan spirit of the whole project, Brandient recommended the name United Business Center and created the brand’s visual identity and the brand applications.
The need for a compelling visibility of the Palas Mall sub-brand generated a separate identity for the retail giant, built around an inviting visual symbol accountable for elegance and enforcing a high class status.
Being the largest real estate project in Southeastern Europe, Palas is a very special project for Brandient. We developed the brand system methodically, using an overarching brand idea that we applied to all verbal and visual identities across the branded architecture.
—Cristian Kit Paul, Creative Director Brandient
For more details, please see the Palas Iasi case study here.
About Brandient
Brandient is an independent brand strategy and design consultancy founded in Bucharest in 2002 by Aneta Bogdan, Cristian Kit Paul and Mihai Bogdan — never part of a global network, working directly for the owners, CEOs and boards of its clients, with an all-senior team and category exclusivity. In over two decades the firm has created or rebuilt more than 300 brands, 279 of them published as case studies at brandient.com/work — from Romania’s national leaders to brands carried worldwide. The firm has been active in Southeast Asia for more than a decade. The work has earned 84 international awards and distinctions — most recently a Red Dot (2025) and two Graphis Golds (2026) — 64 documented mentions in international design books and publications, and, in 2015, a place among the inaugural inductees of the REBRAND Hall of Fame, alongside Interbrand and MetaDesign.
About Iulius and Palas Iași
Palas Iași is Romania’s first mixed-use urban development — a complex of some 270,000 square meters built around the Palace of Culture in Iași, inaugurated in 2012 on an investment of about 265 million euros by Iulius Group, the developer founded by Iulian Dascălu in 2000 that became the country’s largest domestic mall owner-operator. Brandient created the Palas brand in 2010: the Palas Iași case.