Excited to have been working alongside Highrise Communications to help re-brand and re-point 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.
They believe everyone should feel happy, healthy and at home here in Manchester. That’s why, through the power of local giving, we grow community-led health and wellbeing projects making a real difference to people’s lives.
Their work supports more resilient communities by growing community activity, raising aspirations and boosting health and wellbeing. We do this by brokering support between local projects and those wanting to give back.
Anybody can give back to the community- whether its time, money, resources, skills, knowledge or space.
