About
Economic Reform Australia is a not-for-profit organisation who voices reformist thought and values to inform government, media and the public. A group of senior and junior designers came to form Relay Studio for twelve weeks to develop a new brand for ERA. The challenge was set to position ERA’s messaging into a relevant format for a broad audience that often struggles to see the relevance of economic concepts that are too academic, dry and abstract.
Team collaboration
We split up into three teams to cover different grounds: Branding Strategy, Print and Website. The print team developed marketing materials such as brochures and postcards to promote brand awareness. The web team went to work on updating the content structure of the website and align the web design with the rest of the brand. I joined the strategy team. Together we formed the public engagement strategy and develop the style guide and communications strategy across all platforms. I focused on brand consistency and communications strategy while my teammates branched out to the web and print team to direct our team towards a consistent brand.
Initial Research
We discovered how there needed to be more brand consistency not only with print and the website but with other regular communications like email, social media, newsletters and public relations. We found that there was a need to elevate and brighten the use of language and equip our client with tools to communicate and engage a conversation between their audiences as the centrepiece of their branding. This concept is echoed in the meaning of the logomark as shown above. With such a wide range of work to do, we could see that our client was on a steep learning curve to take on board our proposed brand direction.
Client Presentation
We pitched our concepts to the client to explain our process so far and to use the presentation as a litmus test to see how their initial reaction to the new brand direction. This stage was quite interesting because I’ve never put so much detail and explanation into a client presentation before. This slide shown is the slogan/tagline we presented as the campaign tagline to show that the brand is evolving into an organisation that focuses on their commitment to social change.
Style Guide
The strategy team set to work on forming the style guide. We developed the style guide in stages and utilised a short edge landscape binding so that the information can be spread out evenly with plenty of white space.
Logomark
This is a sample of how we presented the logomark in the style guide. I was surprised that an enormous amount of fine detail and effort goes into the process of checking, tweaking and exporting logos.
Communications Style Guide
The communications guide was added in later into the project as a separate guide to explain how to use other collateral such as social media, newsletters, writing style, stock photos and icons. This guide focused on building brand engagement between informed and uninformed audiences and the organisation. The development of this guide was my major contribution to the team project.
Communications Strategy
A cornerstone of our communications strategy was to explain how the digital platforms flow throughout the ERA communication ecosystem. There were other parts we covered such as how to schedule content on social media and how to use related collateral to curate visual content. We also guided the reader through combining visual content and outlined the basics of etiquette, tone and core mission statements.
Digital Branding
We worked closely with the website team to align the web design style with the Facebook Page. The brand focused on providing a simple, clear message by using the organisation's key messages and condensing it down into bite-sized consumption.
Icons
The strategy team assisted with forming icons to illustrate key themes of ERA in a simple yet effective way. These icons were also included within the template of social media content to contextualise the photos with the published articles and content on the website.
Image Library
We used positive and topical imagery from creative commons stock photography as our style of choice. By using creative commons, we established further integrity towards the ethical identity of ERA. The photos were then organised into a curated library so it's easy to find photos that link with written content and articles.
Relay Studio, Adelaide 2016
