Design ops at scale
Building a dynamic brand design language for the DLRG-Jugend
The DLRG-Jugend is the youth organization of the Deutsche Lebens-Rettungs-Gesellschaft (short: DLRG, English: German Life Saving Association) and therefore of the largest voluntary water rescue organization in the world. She is autonomous and serves as a hub for more than 340,000 young people within the DLRG, who are federally organized in over 2,000 independent branches. [1] A place that young people create for young people.
Against this dynamic background, to let the visual branding be nearly untouched for over 15(!) years [2] is almost ironic. While the DLRG-Jugend has a central brand design, it’s collectively owned by the organization, and not controlled from the top. This sets up two key challenges: Running complex organization-wide processes is quite tricky, especially in a volunteer-run structure. Additionally, the design is supported by acceptance alone and has to work for a (very) wide range of backgrounds and resources. Therefore to touch the design is not just a redesign; it is to orchestra a design change across a massive, multifaceted organization. And while larger projects are always a challenge, these circumstances do certainly not help.
I serve as Deputy Federal Chairman of the DLRG-Jugend, a role I assumed basically because the design bothered me. I’ve been involved at the federal level since 2014, elected in 2017, and then started to address the overhaul of our design. As outlined, this isn’t a mere aesthetics mission; it was and is an endeavor of design ops. The entire organization needs to be empowered to adopt and utilize the design — regardless of the structural levels involved and the experiences, resources, and abilities available.
Key takeaways
- Make your key stakeholders your best friend. There might be resistance, and getting everyone on board can be a challenge. Persistence and patience, along with consistent efforts, are key.
- “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” [3] — to stay resilient, make yourself interchangeable as a leader and at the same time flex your style where necessary.
- Take the time and design a process that fits. Know where “out of the box” solutions work and where not and capitalize on the resources at your disposal.
Our path to a new design language
In 2018, I asked the Bundesjugendtag (short: BJT, English: Federal Youth Congress) — the highest decision-making body of the DLRG-Jugend, consisting of 72 delegates from 18 state associations plus the federal level— to instruct the Federal Board to set up a project group that would
[…] develop a contemporary […] design for the DLRG-Jugend as a whole until the BJT in 2020, taking into account the protection of material developed under the current design guidelines. [4]
And therefore to kick off the process towards a new design language. The group had to work in a participatory manner, engage in regular exchange and was tasked to proceed iteratively, therefore empowered
[…] to publish products outside the applicable design manual […][4]
A member of the board myself, to start with a decision of the BJT was important because the joint commitment, and with that a buy-in into the process of the organization. Making our key stakeholders our best friends was key to the success of the whole endeavor. In order to be able to take the whole of the organization along with the result, three values were fundamental from the beginning. Our Design needs to be:
- Acceptable
The new design had to be acceptable to the broad masses in the organization, as it is adopted voluntarily and is sustained solely by the users’ own motivation. - Accessible
The competence and resources in the organization vary greatly — from borrowers to full-time designers, from more “I have to use it” to “I’m really up for it”. The design has to be understandable and usable for everyone, and also to be usable for all possible use cases. A specific need is a reasonable degree of freedom, due to the root cause of a youth organization, while still maintaining recognisability. - Sustainable
The organization is big, and we can’t make fundamental adjustments over and over again, there has to be a consistency that does justice to the organization’s structure and protects investments made. And still, we need a possibility to keep up and develop our design with time.
And with that, I assumed the responsibility and we started our path to a new design language. This journey was segmented into five key stages, but first…
…the project in numbers:
- 2 years
- 12 meetings
- 29 participants with very different backgrounds and design knowledge
– 10 heavily involved, 19 peripherally
– including representatives from 10 state branches
– and all levels of the organization (federal, state, districts, local groups) - about 3000 voices heard
- 14,400 Slack messages
1. Understand the status quo
The machinery of such a large organization can take some time, especially if the task is to involve the whole of the organization. And of course, we could only make binding plans once the BJT had agreed to the project, so it should take until January 2019 to get going. The first meeting was invited openly and organization-wide.
Bringing together people from all over the organization with very different backgrounds, this meeting had two goals: on the one hand to onboard the people to what was to come the next two years, on the other to get into the qualitative research and understand what role design actually plays in the organization, how the participants engage with the status quo of our design and what needs, wishes and requirements actually exist.
Building on this qualitative research, a quantitative one followed to evaluate our hypotheses. With this, we were able to realize an unprecedented level of participation in the organization, which proves once again that the design has a high emotional value in our structure.
Intermezzo: Fate
Fate sometimes plays a nasty game, in February 2019 I suffered a rather serious skiing accident which, even if overly fortunate, relegated me to the side bench for several months.
The fact that the process continued without major disruptions underscored the importance of empowering your team members, giving them a sense of ownership, and fostering self-reliance within the team. It served as an example of the value of thorough planning, efficient onboarding, and obtaining comprehensive buy-in from all stakeholders. And ultimately that you should make yourself interchangeable as a leader. Even when fate throws us a curveball, being well-prepared is half the battle.
2. Who are we? — Our Narrative
From the research, we first derived our core brand values — deeply anchored in the culture of the organization, they were not to be redesigned. It was more a matter of understanding them and defining them more precisely.
Our brand essence:
- We are dynamic, proactive, and young.
- We shape the future of our organization with disruptive ideas.
- We are characterized by the diversity and tolerance of our members.
- We offer young people a protected space to develop their personality and ideals.
- We are self-responsible.
…and of course! We stayed true to ourselves during the design process 😌
3. How do we want to look? — Our Design
Building on this understanding, we started to work on the visual part of the design. Due to the composition of the project group, we had to further design the process to fit. Therefore we divided the actual elaboration of the design into three phases:
3.1 Exploration
In late spring 2019, we started to explore different design directions. In the end, six flavors were consolidated in the summer of 2019, with which we wanted to test different hypotheses. The experiments and ideas came from and were elaborated by, the breadth of the project group. Very few of these teams included designers, but this step was not about aesthetic quality.
Speaking about parallel processes and capitalizing on the resources at your disposal: Independently of the actual design process, we cooperated with Reutlingen University in the winter semester of 2018/2019, which designed a fashion line for us. The considerations and drafts flowed back into the design process and thus functioned as a further source of input.
A second parallelism was the design of our websites. The websites of the DLRG-Jugend, as well as the DLRG, are centrally structured and it simply made sense to keep up with the developments of the DLRG in 2019. This is an example that even if an active design process is currently underway, not everything can wait and that sometimes things have to be derived when they are needed.
At the BJT 2019, the delegates were asked about the six flavors, as well as about the brand core we identified and which assets are fundamental for identification with the organization.
3.2 Definition
From the learnings of the BJT, we iterated a final design direction and its assets. The exchange with the organization remained critical, but the project group became smaller and smaller as the actual visual design came more and more to the center of attention.
3.3 Finalize
The last step of the design phase was to work out the final proposal for the BJT. A simple guideline just doesn’t do the job. We needed a solution that would create certainty and commitment, yet be flexible and able to move with the times without needing a new BJT decision every year. It was about supporting the organization to live its common character, not shackling it with hard rules.
The process up to this point was already, at least in my role, a design ops task. Now it was a matter of empowering not only the project group to get involved, but the whole organization to embrace and live the design.
Second Intermezzo: Corona
Somewhere during the definition phase corona hit. We had to move to the digital space and needed some adjustments, but we kept the process on track. The fixed assignment to submit a concluded proposal to the BJT 2020 was never in doubt. As so often, it was important to be clear about the goal and to flex your style where necessary. That’s most times the other half of the battle.
4. Deployment
The BJT 2020 accepted our proposal overwhelmingly positively. Besides the actual design language, this resolution included the following [5]:
The mandate to prepare an adequate documentation in line with the organization’s requirements:
[The Federal Board] is instructed to make the [design language] available to the organization in a suitable form […]. Care shall be taken to ensure that this presentation is always comprehensible, and accessible to the breadth of the organization.
The commitment of the federal and state associations to communicate the new binding regulations in their respective spheres and to ensure compliance with them:
[…] the mandate of the federal and state associations to communicate the […] regulations in their […] subdivisions and to support them in complying with them.
The long-term mandate of the Federal Board to actively maintain the brand and the design, in a participatory and transparent manner:
[The Federal Board] is entrusted with the coordination and maintenance of the brand and the design. In doing so, it has to work in a participatory and transparent way across the different sections and levels.
The mandate to protect our brand:
[The Federal Board] is instructed to take appropriate measures to protect the trademark in terms of valid resolutions and their implementation. […]
And a transitional arrangement to protect made investments:
[…] The framework guidelines must be observed for all new applications. Existing materials and current projects at the time of the decision, […] are not obligatorily affected by the changeover.
In addition to the proposal itself, we wrote a leaflet that clarified the structure of the proposal and therefore made it easier to understand it and its consequences. [7]
5. Ongoing Maintenance
The ongoing task is the constant maintenance of the design and the brand. It’s anchored in the resolution and made possible by its design. This step is designed to ensure that we do not return to the stagnation that existed before the process. The BJT must be informed annually about current developments.
However, we are far from where we want to be, even now, three years after the decision. The main reason for this is the discontinuity in voluntary work, which is natural and fine and has already been mentioned.
So — what did we actually come up with?
Let’s look into our new design language and its construction.
The design of our design language
We divided the final design language into two parts [6]:
Design Framework — The Mandatory
Defines the core elements of the DLRG-Jugend’s visual identity, e.g. logo, color scheme, and typography. These guidelines serve as a baseline for all design-related work and ensure that the organization’s visual identity is as recognizable and consistent as possible while maintaining enough freedom for all the different needs in the organization. Out of this fundamental function, they are mandatory to use and can only be changed by the BJT. With an eye on a realistic acceptability, the elaboration of the design framework was more about a refinement of the existing elements than a new design.
Design Guide — The Suggestion
In addition, there is a suggested design language that offers a common direction and supports it with resources e.g. inspirational material and templates. It is designed to help create visually appealing and effective materials, no matter what skills and resources are available, and still leave room for maneuvering for the diverse requirements and applications in the organization. The design language is maintained under the leadership of the federal association, and the BJT is reported to every year. This allows us to act more quickly, as we do not have to pass a resolution every year to change the design language.
design.dlrg-jugend.de
To support the implementation of these guidelines, we established a centralized platform that serves as a hub for all design-related questions and resources. This platform not only provides access to the regulations and guidelines but also offers practical tips and know-how to enhance design practices. This approach ensures that volunteers across the organization can easily access the necessary resources and information they need to create high-quality, effective design work that aligns with the organization’s visual identity and values.
Impact
After critical responses at the beginning of the design process, the result has been overwhelmingly well received and has unexpectedly quickly taken root in the organization. Its adoption not only enhanced our shared visual identity but also fostered our culture and brought the organization closer together. While quantifiable figures are sometimes hard to grab in our structure, one telling KPI is that roughly 20% of all visits to the federal website lead to the design platform.
And the organization uses the components of the new language as intended: some are closer to what we offer, and some take more freedom.
And with that, it does completely what it was designed to do: to empower everyone inside the DLRG-Jugend to identify with and express themself as a part of the organization — with their resources and opportunities while having space to stay true to themselves and learn in the process.
References
- DLRG-Jugend (2019) Die DLRG-Jugend. https://dlrg-jugend.de/wir/dlrg-jugend/. Accessed 13 Jun 2023
- DLRG-Jugend (2007) Corporate Design. https://schleswig-holstein.dlrg.de/fileadmin/groups/12000000/Downloads/Jugend/OEffenlichkeitsarbeit/CD/Gestaltungshandbuch.pdf. Accessed 13 Jun 2023
- Helmuth von Moltke (1800–91) Prussian military commander.
- Felix Kalkuhl (2018) Erarbeitung eines neues Corporate Design. https://dlrg.net/global/Apps/Asset/assetService.php?gldid=2712&aid=715657&v=o&file=Antrag_2018.pdf.
Accessed 13 Jun 2023 - Felix Kalkuhl (2020) Antrag zur Marke und Design der DLRG-Jugend. https://dlrg.net/global/Apps/Asset/assetService.php?gldid=2712&aid=715659&v=o&file=antrag_2020.pdf.
Accessed 13 Jun 2023 - DLRG-Jugend (2020) Rahmenrichtline — Marke und Design der DLRG-Jugend. https://dlrg.net/global/Apps/Asset/assetService.php?gldid=2712&aid=715658&v=o&file=rahmenrichtlinie.pdf.
Accessed 13 Jun 2023 - DLRG-Jugend (2020) Beipackzettel: Rahmenrichtlinie — Marke und Design der DLRG-Jugend. https://dlrg.net/global/Apps/Asset/assetService.php?gldid=2712&aid=715656&v=o&file=antrag_2020_beipackzettel.pdf Accessed 13 Jun 2023
