BUILDING ON SOLID FOUNDATIONS
Sometimes you have to dig deeper
Many organisations realise some way into their evolution the need for increasingly effective and engaging communication tools to reach a larger audience than initially anticipated. This is particularly true of charitable entities with a practical on-the-ground remit where initial budgets are rightly directed towards tangible programmes in the first instance. This was exactly the case for Children & Violence – Evaluation Challenge Fund. We helped them better articulate their mission through their brand and identity and built them a website to help showcase their work.
‘With our new site and identity, it feels like we have revived our organization and are able to communicate so much better about our work. We can’t recommend Together enough – everyone is incredibly impressed by their work, which in turn has changed our work for the better!’
THE NAME
No excuses for obscurity
Charitable organisations need to reach people as much as any business; their funding landscape is often just as competitive. A natural tendency is to try to convey detail and nuance, but attempting to ‘say everything’ often leads to a lack of clarity and definition. We took the name and identity back to basics to ensure that both the name and accompanying visual convey the mission and work of the organisation.
THE PROCESS
Enjoyable exploration and creative clarity
We promise our clients an enjoyable voyage of discovery and creativity. It’s a process that rigorously explores and reveals ways of conveying who you are and what you do. It’s not a science but it’s as close as you can get: a creative process, that allows room for the unexpected and tangential influences and ingredients to create something unique and engaging.
THE LOGO
A positive framing
We created an identity that represents a child using stylised versions of the letter-forms of ‘V’ ‘A’ ‘C’ (Violence Against Children), the acronym commonly associated with the client’s field of work.
Representing childhood
Much of the Evaluation Fund’s work deals with difficult subject matter. Our work needed to somehow emphasise the positive, transformative impact their work has. We wanted to create a brand that captured some of the playfulness, joy and happiness that should be part of any child’s experience, no matter where they are born. We also needed to be mindful that any representation of a child should be abstract enough to have no links to geographic location or culture.
COMMUNICATION MATERIALS
A toolkit to support a communication strategy
It was essential to enable the team to create high-quality, on-brand materials after the initial work was delivered. We created a suite of templates and an easy to use toolkit of logo files.
ICONOGRAPHY
Taking the brand further
The Evaluation Fund support research projects around the world. Their evaluation focuses on a number of key topic areas. We created a set of icons aligned with the main brand to illustrate these key areas.
Spot illustrations
A stylised shorthand
Creating a supporting set of icons or illustrations can bring more text-heavy material to life and make it more engaging. A combination of research, mood-boards, idea generation and sketching lead us towards stylistic options. We then added the icons to our brand toolkit for use in different formats and mediums.
COLOUR
Aligning with existing initiatives
The Evaluation Fund aligns its work with WHO’s 7 INSPIRE strategies for ending violence against children. It was important to find a palette that worked alongside the 7 colours whilst maintaining their own identity.
WEBSITE
An online showcase
For smaller teams, it’s important to create a website and accompanying content management system that’s as low-maintenance and robust as possible. The harder task is not losing the creativity in the process.
CASE STUDIES
Online content converter
It’s all very well having a nice looking site but so often printed web pages can look a mess. With frequently published evidence briefs, we wanted to ensure that content entered into a bespoke section of the CMS could populate a high-quality, designed pdf, ready for download and print.
BRAND GUIDELINES
A booklet for visual decision making
A guideline document can enable an organisation to be consistent in their application of a brand’s identity and associated assets, or it can go further and encompass everything from tone of voice to use of imagery and typography. At Together, we work hard to ensure that guidelines avoid the obvious and strip back the non-essential to make sure the bits that matter get through to the front line.
FULL CLIENT TESTIMONIAL
We have worked with Together Creative to re-vamp what was previously a dormant website and complicated visual identity of our organization into something that is creative, user-friendly, and speaks to our partners in the field.
Having worked with several other design agencies and website developers in the past, we know that it can be challenging to create a website and logo from scratch. But what has always been a frustrating process in the past was a pleasure with TC: Their team is incredibly thoughtful, thorough, and lovely to interact with. They take your ideas and feedback seriously and in so doing, always find something that will be sure to respond to your needs.
With our new site and identity, it feels like we have revived our organization and are able to communicate so much better about our work. We can’t recommend TC enough – everyone is incredibly impressed by their work, which in turn has changed our work for the better!
Sara Bensaude De Castro Freire
Senior Program Manager
Giulia Barnhisel
Program Officer