Project Information
Project type
VISUAL IDENTITY DESIGN
PRODUCT DESIGN
Key contribution
CLIENT SERVISING
RESEARCHER
DESIGNER
Tools used
PEN & PAPER, ADOBE XD, INVISION, ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR
Duration
JUL 2021 – AUG 2021
Project Background
In Ontario, disabled young adults can stay in High School until the age of 21. After this date, these citizens are required to find a facility to continue their own development. There are a number of day programs and employment opportunities for over 21-year-old disabled people who can provide self-directed. There are very few programs for people who are physically disabled and need high levels of care and cannot self-direct. 'Let's Grow' was built with the hope and belief of creating a program that will immensely help such individuals. They have participated in and been in regular contact with families north of the city who have built successful day programs (Steer Friends and Peaceful Hearts). These relationships have allowed them to leverage their knowledge and relationship to help accelerate the establishment of a terrific new day program that will meet the needs of the severely disabled community in Downtown, Toronto. Project Let's Grow has their own network of highly motivated parents here in Toronto who will be working with them to build this program. After creating a group of passionate parents, their next step was to establish a brand identity and presence that makes them stand out and helps them to spread awareness about this great initiative.
Identifying the problem
HOW MIGHT WE CREATE A DISTINCT BRAND PERSONA FOR 'LET'S GROW' THAT WILL REACH AND CONNECT WITH THE RELEVANT AUDIENCES ( PARENTS AND DONORS) EFFECTIVELY?
Defining Goals
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Establishing a distinct visual identity (Including logo, colour palette and font family) for 'Let's Grow'.
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Designing an effective website for the program that will assist parents, donors and volunteers to get involved with the program easily.
Research
USER RESEARCH
User research was conducted through survey and interviews to understand the problem areas of current options and expectations from Let's Grow brand and its website. The visual identity for the brand is heavily influenced by the perspective of these users.
PERSONA ANALYSIS
Personas are fictional characters, which we create based upon our research to represent the different user types that might similarly use our platform/product. Creating personas helps us to understand our users’ needs, experiences, behaviors, and goals. Personas make the design task at hand less complex, they guide our ideation processes, and they can help us to achieve the goal of creating a good user experience for our target user group. Following 2 personas have been created with survey and interview done for ‘Let's Grow’.
Parent Persona
Donor Persona
Ideate
STYLE TILE
A Style tile generally contains the colour palette, font family and different styling options for the font depending on scenarios. This helps the brand to have a cohesive look over all types of communication platform including website, social media posts, brochures and other physical materials. This guideline gives a brand a certain characteristics and connects users in a personal way.
MOODBOARD
Moodboard is an arrangement of images, materials, pieces of text, etc. intended to evoke or project a particular style or concept. When creating the moodboard for 'Let's Grow' logo, we took into consideration the word associations that came up from user survey and we studied logos with similar theme. Below are some examples.
VOICE & TONE
Establishing the right voice and tone for the content is an exercise in empathy. Getting these elements
right tells our users that we care enough to communicate with them in a way that resonates with them. Our voice makes us unique, and our tone makes us sound human. Some structured writing guidelines also helps the brand to communicate in a constant way with its users.
SITE MAP
A sitemap lists a website's most important pages, thus, making sure search engines can find and crawl them. Sitemaps also help in understanding the website structure, making it easier to navigate the website.
Design
LOGO OPTIONS
We have designed multiple logo options for the project and incorporated client feedback in phases. Fianlly we created a sort of guideline of using the logo with/out the tagline against light and dark background, so that it becomes easier for the client to choose the best option.
WIREFRAMES
The first step of the designing process is creating wireframe. It is the skeletal representation of the platform that doesn't contain any image, but only indicates the placement of different elements. The goal of wireframe annotations is to make understanding how and why something on the screen should work as clear as possible to anyone viewing the wireframes.
Conclusion
Finally, We built and launched the Let's Grow website successfully in October 2021. We have received many kind words on our branding and website design from the patrons and stakeholders. More importantly, the website has gotten a significant number of visitors without any promotion. We wish the organizers of the Let's Grow project all the best with their unparallel initiative.
INTENDED OUTCOMES
Parents
Will get enough information regarding the program and will be able to enroll their child to the program from the website
Donors
Will be able to experience the transparency of the project and donate directly through the website
Volunteers
Will be able to apply for possible positions directly from the website