Refining a well-established brand: A Case Study of American Jewish World Service’s Visual Identity
May 2007
branding
Is it time to revisit your brand?
As your organization evolves, especially if you’re making the transition from one life cycle to the next, it may become necessary to take a good, long look at your organization’s brand and consider making some changes.
At first, this task might seem like a terrible idea:
- “But we’ve got history with this logo.”
- “The tagline might be a little out-of-date, but it’ll be a nightmare to come up with a new one.”
- “Our colors have worked so far. Why change them now?”
- "If we suddenly alter everything, we’ll be perceived as an unstable, wishy-washy organization."
- "What could possibly be wrong with our name?"
Those are all legitimate questions and concerns (except perhaps the one about how coming up with a new tagline might be hard). And yet, revisiting and reassessing your brand (both visual identity and messages) is an important exercise. After all, your brand needs to evolve along with your organization. Even if you decide that everything is fine, a good evaluation will at least reaffirm your brand’s success.
But what if it’s not fine, and what happens when your organization outgrows your original brand?
Tremendous growth: as problems go, there could be worse ones, but still…
American Jewish World Service (AJWS) is an international development organization dedicated to alleviating poverty, hunger and disease among the people of the developing world regardless of race, religion or nationality. Motivated by Judaism's imperative to pursue economic and social justice, AJWS helps people in Africa, Asia, and the Americas realize their basic human rights by empowering grassroots non-governmental organizations. Through grant-making, volunteer service, advocacy, and education, AJWS works to build civil society, foster sustainable development and promote human dignity for all people.
old AJWS logo
In recent years, AJWS has experienced enormous organizational and programmatic growth, thanks in part to its quick response to the devastating tsunami in South Asia and its work raising awareness of the ongoing genocidal crisis in Darfur. This growth has raised its profile among social justice organizations and the general public.
Since its founding in 1985, AJWS had allowed its brand to evolve somewhat organically. By 2006, there was some concern that its visual brand was struggling to keep up with the expansion of the organization's services, and they turned to Big Duck to help them address the issue.
While our department has been able to achieve a high degree of consistency in our materials, there was some feeling that our visual brand, especially our logo, didn't reflect our current position as a leader in international social justice work.
— Susan Rosenberg, Director of Communications
A challenge of refining the AJWS visual brand, then, would be to find the balance between the grassroots work of the organization and the professionalism of its leadership role.
Achieving a long-term goal through a short-term need…
AJWS was also in need of an annual report, and through this assignment, Big Duck developed a visual vocabulary for their overall brand refinement.
It was agreed that the AJWS tagline was successful in communicating the principal idea behind the organization: "Pursuing global justice through grassroots change." Big Duck therefore used the tagline as part of the consideration while developing a refined visual brand. In reviewing materials, we discovered that AJWS has an incredible photographic library showing its work around the world.
Photographs from the AJWS library
Nothing could tell the story of AJWS better than the photographs we saw, many of which were taken by AJWS President Ruth Messinger. It became immediately clear that these photographs should inform the visual identity we were creating.
— Ksenia Lobanova, Big Duck Art Director
So with a strong tagline and a terrific photographic library, we set out to create an annual report that would allow the photography to flourish, while simultaneously keeping an eye on the larger picture of the overall brand refinement.
It was important to AJWS that the annual report and the brand refinement both keep the focus on their work at the grassroots level. With that in mind, Big Duck used imagery from the photography to find inspiration. The colorful clothing of the various populations served as inspiration for the color palette.
Additionally, AJWS's work is often connected with nature itself. So we used brown to represent the earth; blue to evoke the sky and water; orange and yellow to convey the sun, sand, clay, and wood.
AJWS 2006 Annual Report, cover and interior spread
The annual report captured the feel of AJWS's work and the organization as a whole. The colors, photography, and typography felt like a natural evolution from where we'd been before, but presented to the world a more grownup vision of our international position.
— Liz Freiberg, Senior Communications Associate
But what about that logo?
While working on the annual report, Big Duck was also exploring possible new logos for AJWS. Initially, AJWS wasn't sure if they wanted an entirely new logo or a variation of the current one. They had been using the old logo for nearly twenty years, which had given it a fair amount of equity. At the same time, they felt it was an outdated representation of the organization.
With options limitless, Big Duck pursued three strategies:
- The first approach was to "tweak" the old logo, simplifying and cleaning where possible, but leaving it the same at its essence.
- The second approach expressed the same concept as the old logo, but with a new execution.
- The third approach created entirely new logos to represent AJWS and its mission.
Big Duck gave us a broad range of options, which helped us clarify the direction we wanted to go. Ultimately, we decided that we wanted our new logo to communicate both the world and humanity, thus remaining in the spirit of the original logo, but carrying us forward as a leader in international social justice.
— Susan Rosenberg, Director of Communications
The selected logo was a new execution of their original concept. It was simplified and pared down, more symbolic than literal. Rather than an exact representation, the new logo evokes both the hands and the globe and utilizes two colors from the new palette.
New logo
Stationery system
Owning the new visual brand
With the new logo, typography, design support elements, and color palette finalized (in four-color, two-color, and single-color versions), the refined brand was applied to all of AJWS's official materials: letterhead, business cards, mailing labels, and email signatures.
It is important for an organization to internalize its new or refined brand. So Big Duck created a detailed style guide, and the brand will be policed by AJWS's Communications Department. To prepare them for this undertaking, and to teach AJWS staff to use the refined brand clearly and consistently, Big Duck facilitated several training sessions.
AJWS is already using the brand with great success.
Stationery system
Stationery system
Our recent mailings have been enormously successful. They've demonstrated to our partners and funders the success of our grassroots work and, using our new logo and refined brand, communicated our direction forward.
— Ruth Messinger, AJWS President
Refining a brand: it doesn't have to hurt
With Big Duck working in cooperation with AJWS at every step, refining the brand was a collaborative process. It was certainly a challenge, as any good branding exercise should be. But it was also fruitful and successful.
If you think it might be time to revisit your organization's brand, you may want to find an experienced partner that can help you develop solutions. Strategic thinking, creative ideas, and expert guidance can take you through the process as painlessly as possible.