Brand on a Mission
Your Mission, Vision, and Values Should Guide How Your Organization Acts – and How it Looks
Your mission, vision, and values lie at the heart of what your organization does. But if you’ve been considering an organizational rebrand, those core concepts of who you are as a company or nonprofit should also inform how you present yourself to the world.
But before we dive in, let’s talk branding: what exactly is it, and why is it important?
Branding is a set of resources developed to create a cohesive theme of your organization’s image across all platforms — so when people see something from your group, they automatically recognize where it’s from. It often entails a selection of colors, graphics, and fonts, and the design of a logo and other icons.
Branding does not happen in a vacuum; done right, it should be directly inspired by your organization’s mission, vision, and values. Since we began offering branding services, we’ve worked diligently with our clients to generate the optimal look that fits their organization, and learned a few things along the way. Here are a few tips we'd like to share…
Make a tagline — Every public-facing organization needs a few words to summarize what they do in a catchy, memorable way. Taglines give people just enough info at first glance to know a bit about what your organization does, but reels them in to learn more. For example, Denny Civic Solutions’ tagline is “turning ideas into action.” While it definitely encompasses what we do, our tagline also leads viewers to ask, “How?”
Colors mean a lot — It’s been long studied and documented that exposure to different colors makes people feel different things, and we all know that different colors have different implications. When it comes to developing your organization’s branding, your vision and values are fundamental for selecting your color scheme.
If we look at Denny Civic Solutions’ values, we see that as an organization, we want to come off as committed, adaptive, collaborative, and yet fun. Looking at our organizational color palette, we can see two shades of aqua blue (which convey calm and a bit of fun playfulness), a red ochre (which can convey passion/commitment), a slate gray (which conveys calm and professionalism), and last, a pea green (which implies growth, adaptiveness, and some connection to earth). As part of our core brand, these colors come together to create a cohesive look for our organization that ties directly back to our values, mission, and vision.
Ask questions — When it comes to rebranding, many organizations begin the process because they feel that their current branding doesn’t fit their mission, vision, and values. In this process, it’s important to suss out specifically what doesn’t fit. We find that asking questions about the current and preferred branding helps a lot. Here are a few that we think can be quite illuminating:
Does the logo convey your organization’s mission?
What feelings does the color palette elicit?
Does the brand show an organization you want to be? How so, and how not?
What are the most valuable services your organization provides? Are those being conveyed in your brand image?
Can you come up with 3 words that describe your branding now? How about three words that describe what you want your brand to be? How do these words compare and contrast, and how do they adhere to your mission/vision/values?
Rebranding can be a tricky, stressful, and involved process – but we can guide you through it, every step of the way. Whether you need a full rebranding consultant, a graphic designer, or a little bit of both, Denny Civic Solutions can help.
If you think it’s time for a refresh, click here to schedule a 15-minute discovery call to see if we’d be a good fit for you.