HeadCount Needed a New Logo and a New Look for 2008
As some of you may know, I am the Art Director for the non-partisan voter registration organization HeadCount. We are a grassroots organization that reaches out to potential voters at concert and festivals. Well, we just wrapped up our big 2008 Election Year push, and we couldn't have been happier with the results our collective efforts have yielded.
My contributions to the group ranged from behind the scenes administration duties, as well as being on the front lines registering voters at local (and not so local) concerts and festivals. But, my year started out with the huge task of establishing the visual branding for HeadCount's field operations and also re-vamping our corporate logo.
Changing and established logo for any organization is a daunting task. It normally takes months of research, and back and forth with a committee of decision makers before something pleasing to everyone is agreed upon. Unfortunately, we didn't have that kind of time - it was the beginning of 2008, arguably the most important time in HeadCount's short history. We needed something immediately. So, I decided to break the logo project into two parts. Part one would happen immediately and would be a change to satisfy the requirements and the objectives decided upon by myself and the rest of the Executive Committee. It wouldn't be a complete overhaul, but, more of a tweaking of the design of the logo. The second part, which has yet to happen (and in fact must be reviewed to re-evaluate its necessity) would be a complete overhaul of the logo and visual branding.
The major objectives were to
1. Make the logo more universal
2. Make it more acceptable to our corporate partners
3. To increase the readability of the logo both from a distance and in small print.
4. We also needed several versions of the logo to be used in various applications where a full color logo with icon cannot go.
Since I didn't have time for a major overhaul, I needed to meet those objectives while still keeping the same basic logo structure. We didn't want anyone to say "Hey, you guys changed your logo!"
As you can see from the example of the "Old Logo" to the right, the broken letters make it hard to read. It was also unclear what was behind the wordmark (are those people, or paint blobs?) and the paint splatter below the wordmark made it hard for the logo to fit universally into multiple applications.
In the example of the "New Logo" to the right, you can see that the biggest change is that the lettering has been cleaned up significantly making it more readable. However, it still holds the same basic structure that the old lettering did. The people in the background have become more defined and the paint spatter below the wordmark was removed, making it easier for the logo to fit into more applications - tucked nicely in a corner, at the bottom of a document, or even as a headline without difficult negative space to contend with. You can also see from the alternate examples below how the lettering was cleaned up even further - these were used in application where we could only use one color for printing or where the logo would appear very small. Also, you can see examples of the wordmark only logos that were created for various applications. These were used throughout the year mostly when we knew we would have limited space, and we wanted to maximize the impact of our name.
Once the changes to the logo were accepted, I was able to move on to the visual branding of our field operations. The look of the field signage needed to be bright, eye catching, dynamic, and unique while also speaking to the nature of what we do (namely, registering voters). You can see in the photo of a complete booth set up below what our field signage looked like. The use of the font "American Typewriter" was picked up from the new logo, giving a cohesive look to our branding. The colors and graphical elements remained consistent throughout all the collateral I designed. A style sheet outlining all the graphical elements, fonts, colors and logos as well as how to use them was also created for use by any other designers we hired down the road, or for outside agencies to follow.
All in all, the visual branding scheme was a success. We looked incredibly professional in the field thanks to our cohesive look. The new logo was a great success as well, having be used not only on our own site, but, also on our corporate and band partners sites - everyone from Magic Hat Brewery to Dave Matthews and Jack Johnson used our new logo to promote our partnership.
Over the 2008 Election year, we registered over 105,000 voters, activated over 40 teams in major U.S. cities and had a presence at more than 1000 concerts. We also created a documentary (which you can view here), recorded radio PSA's with Jack Johnson, Jeff Tweedy, Bob Weir, Jim James and others, and teamed up with Oxfam America to produce a voter guide that was distributed to over 10,000 potential voters. To see a re-cap of all the great things HeadCount did this year, or if you need to register to vote for next time please visit HeadCount.org.
My contributions to the group ranged from behind the scenes administration duties, as well as being on the front lines registering voters at local (and not so local) concerts and festivals. But, my year started out with the huge task of establishing the visual branding for HeadCount's field operations and also re-vamping our corporate logo.
Changing and established logo for any organization is a daunting task. It normally takes months of research, and back and forth with a committee of decision makers before something pleasing to everyone is agreed upon. Unfortunately, we didn't have that kind of time - it was the beginning of 2008, arguably the most important time in HeadCount's short history. We needed something immediately. So, I decided to break the logo project into two parts. Part one would happen immediately and would be a change to satisfy the requirements and the objectives decided upon by myself and the rest of the Executive Committee. It wouldn't be a complete overhaul, but, more of a tweaking of the design of the logo. The second part, which has yet to happen (and in fact must be reviewed to re-evaluate its necessity) would be a complete overhaul of the logo and visual branding.
The major objectives were to
1. Make the logo more universal
2. Make it more acceptable to our corporate partners
3. To increase the readability of the logo both from a distance and in small print.
4. We also needed several versions of the logo to be used in various applications where a full color logo with icon cannot go.
Since I didn't have time for a major overhaul, I needed to meet those objectives while still keeping the same basic logo structure. We didn't want anyone to say "Hey, you guys changed your logo!"
As you can see from the example of the "Old Logo" to the right, the broken letters make it hard to read. It was also unclear what was behind the wordmark (are those people, or paint blobs?) and the paint splatter below the wordmark made it hard for the logo to fit universally into multiple applications.
In the example of the "New Logo" to the right, you can see that the biggest change is that the lettering has been cleaned up significantly making it more readable. However, it still holds the same basic structure that the old lettering did. The people in the background have become more defined and the paint spatter below the wordmark was removed, making it easier for the logo to fit into more applications - tucked nicely in a corner, at the bottom of a document, or even as a headline without difficult negative space to contend with. You can also see from the alternate examples below how the lettering was cleaned up even further - these were used in application where we could only use one color for printing or where the logo would appear very small. Also, you can see examples of the wordmark only logos that were created for various applications. These were used throughout the year mostly when we knew we would have limited space, and we wanted to maximize the impact of our name.
Once the changes to the logo were accepted, I was able to move on to the visual branding of our field operations. The look of the field signage needed to be bright, eye catching, dynamic, and unique while also speaking to the nature of what we do (namely, registering voters). You can see in the photo of a complete booth set up below what our field signage looked like. The use of the font "American Typewriter" was picked up from the new logo, giving a cohesive look to our branding. The colors and graphical elements remained consistent throughout all the collateral I designed. A style sheet outlining all the graphical elements, fonts, colors and logos as well as how to use them was also created for use by any other designers we hired down the road, or for outside agencies to follow.
All in all, the visual branding scheme was a success. We looked incredibly professional in the field thanks to our cohesive look. The new logo was a great success as well, having be used not only on our own site, but, also on our corporate and band partners sites - everyone from Magic Hat Brewery to Dave Matthews and Jack Johnson used our new logo to promote our partnership.
Over the 2008 Election year, we registered over 105,000 voters, activated over 40 teams in major U.S. cities and had a presence at more than 1000 concerts. We also created a documentary (which you can view here), recorded radio PSA's with Jack Johnson, Jeff Tweedy, Bob Weir, Jim James and others, and teamed up with Oxfam America to produce a voter guide that was distributed to over 10,000 potential voters. To see a re-cap of all the great things HeadCount did this year, or if you need to register to vote for next time please visit HeadCount.org.
posted by Jamie Huntsman at
2:08 PM
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