The nature of being a designer is that at some stage you will have to work on a project where the brand is not fully formed or is in transition, but you still need to deliver a piece of collateral that is consistent with the organisation’s ethos.
This can be a challenge: you can let your creativity get the better of you and grab the opportunity to unleash a totally original and Machiavellian design manifesto to the client. Or you allow this to be an opportunity for you and the client to explore and test elements of the new brand without revealing too much in advance of its launch.
For example, with this design for SCL, they were in the process of rebranding, but still needed to deliver their annual report and trustee recruitment pack. They had already decided on the colour scheme and wanted to incorporate them as a visual transition for their audiences. This allowed me to design elements that bridged between the existing and the upcoming brand.
For the cover I decided to focus on image and not to rely on an intricate layout to drive the design. The placement of the logo in the lower right corner was to allow the image to breath and not to highlight the outgoing logo.
I then used the existing colours to bring to life the icons that represent their key services, their Universal Offers. I extended this colour palette to the illustrations that I used to the present key facts and figures in a more visually engaging way.
I followed the same general path for the trustee recruitment pack, where the key challenge was to present the highlights of their four-year plan is a way that was simple to understand at a glance. So I again extended the colour palette to include some graded, darker tones to help differentiate between the different years.
I won’t win any prizes for visionary design with this project, but the client was over the moon to have two visually engaging documents that finally closed the door on their text heavy previous versions, and that they could use to promote their achievements to their key audiences. When you’re trying to get to a destination and you have to leave before the route is set, sometimes the best decision is to hold a steady course.