Working alongside the leading charity focussed PR agency Highrise Communications to help rebrand and repoint Step Up MCR – the place based giving charity for Manchester.
The new rebrand consisted of a logo re-fresh, redeveloped brand identity and guidelines, new custom built website with CMS, digital assets, illustration and printed newspaper.
Once completed, a digital brand asset pack was also created in Canva containing ‘on-brand- templates and guides for the in-house team to create and produce their own assets and deliverables.
The logo mechanism structure itself was brought back and simplified. The hexagonal structuring was kept and still shows the original bottom step iconography but losing the excess bordering and upper steps.
This gives the logo a more contemporary forward thinking feel and is bold in its approach – but also retains the existing brand ethos structure.
By adding additional colour it also helped move away from any ‘Manchester Bee’ connotations which have become ubiquitous over recent years.
The current brand palette consisted of a bright yellow and grey duotone, with project image photography saved as mono. This worked extremely well, but when applied over a number of pages or applications it was difficult to differentiate its offerings and created a certain visual ‘samey-ness’ . Black and white imagery also dulled and flattened off the vibrant projects and people that Step Up MCR partner with making the visual storytelling process difficult.
The logo was also made responsive, meaning this could adapt or stack to suit any application. Digital, social and print applications vary so much nowadays and this ensures the logo keep its clarity at all times.
The logo mark and logo type can also be separated as needed too. The logotype itself was also bolstered by a more impactful font.
The new brand palette built, on the existing yellow as its base hero colour, also introduces an additional selection of four eye-catching sub colours to work alongside. The dark greys then became neutral base colours to underpin and lift this new palette.
A separate font pairing system was created to allow balanced and interesting type layout structures consisting of two fonts of various weights. A characterful new headline font, complimented with a hardworking body text font.
The website is bright, clear and fun its approach, heavily showcasing the exciting projects and teams that work alongside Step Up MCR. The site is highly pictorial to fully convey the breadth and variety of projects undertaken.
The website has been put together in such away that it can be easily updated and maintained by the in-house team.
We have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from the Step Up MCR team who are delighted with their revised branding and online presence and confident the professional, yet fun design effectively communicates their values to their community.
Strong communication throughout the project enabled us to collaborate closely with Step Up MCR and gain a deep insight and understanding of the local projects that are at the heart of the organisation. This insight formed a design strategy that keeps those community projects front and centre.
