Brand positioning, Visual identity and website design for a community-centred organisation focused on the intersection between climate change and racial injustice promoted by The University of Toronto.
Overview
The current climate crisis will continue to impact black and racialised communities across North America disproportionately. CCRL is a start-up funded by the University of Toronto that will shape and drive the climate change agenda of the city through action research, community action, and policy engagement.
The challenge
The University of Toronto came to us with the need to create a brand identity and a bespoke website to give the start-up a solid and professional image, which would help them build early trust with the stakeholders, to raise funds for the ongoing projects and develop their team.
Client
Community Climate Resilience Lab
Services Provided
Creative Direction
Brand Strategy
Branding
Web design
Illustration
02.
Visual Identity
The logotype was inspired by the “change through action” concept. Through our exploration, we wanted to find a new way to share CCRL's commitment to have the change coming from the collaboration of people. We started by exploring an ownable brandmark.
Building on the attributes of the CCRL brand, we created an iconic, potent, and dynamic symbol which entails profound meanings. The dots and the lines represent people who generate progress, marching together, speaking up about injustices and leading the change. The lines and dots also resemble exclamation marks, which bend to adapt but are still firm in what they want to communicate and do.
For the visual language, we took elements of the brandmark and used them as blown-up graphic elements giving the identity an ownable, bold touch. CCRL's primary colour palette is limited to black, greys, and a signature yellow. The yellow feels vibrant and optimistic. The black is institutional, solid, and to be taken seriously.
Spectral is the leading display type for CCRL. Its nuance adds approachability to CCRL’s voice. Selecting Manrope as the supporting type of system offers a clean balance.
01.
Brand Development
CCRL defined their brand attributes as outspoken, knowledgeable, approachable, and transformative. In addition to their primary attributes, we focused on the word “inclusive”. Inclusivity has the power to represent the many facets of how the Community Climate Resilience Lab is unique. It relates to the company’s deep commitment to climate justice linked to racial justice. More so, it’s a word that can resonate with their audiences’ desire to feel heard and involved in the change. CCRL is for the people. We eventually settled on a concept around evolution through action: action where grassroots communities and policymakers are working together, side by side.
03.
Illustration
The first project of CCRL is The Reconciling Racial Justice and Climate Resilience Project, which will co-create and lead an action research process to support the creation of Toronto’s first Racial Justice Climate Resilience Framework. For this project, we created a bespoke illustration representing central themes such as flooding, food deserts, collective uprisings, overheating and flooding of the cities, police patrolling, healthy communities, collaborations, and food sovereignty.
04.
Canva templates
To empower the CCRL team to deal independently with their communication without hiring external help, we created a set of modern and on-brand social media templates in Canva that can be easily updated without design knowledge.
05.
Website
We started our process by designing wireframes in Figma. The prototype was interactive and resembled the finished product. Once we addressed the feedback, we developed a beautiful and functional website in Webflow. Webflow is a no-code platform, easy to manage from the client's point of view. We created a video in Loom to explain how the platform works, so the client and its stakeholders could always refer to it.
I'm writing to officially and sincerely thank you for putting in all the amazing work and back and forth needed to get the website done and complete. I know that hammering out some of the final details was at times challenging. I also know this beginning of the project in terms of getting on the same page around design and vision took a little more work than expected. I just wanted to genuinely thank you for your professionalism and for developing a platform I can truly be proud of. You really hit the mark.
Imara Ajani Rolston
Founder, Community Climate Resilience Lab
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