Bringing Human Truths Forward
Creativity includes one tablespoon of human truth
Recently, my team worked on a brand refresh to better visualize an Employee Resource Group called Women in Beer & Beyond. The mission and vision of the organization within my company is about building an inclusive space where women, female-identifying, and allies can come together. As an employee in the alcohol-beverage space, there have not always been a lot of women in the room…but times are changing rapidly.
The team explored the great logos of feminine culture and simplistic brands of our time. From the Starbuck’s siren to the Nike check, we hashed out who we wanted to be and how far into it we wanted to go. One thing we began to notice is that we needed to view our ERG as an extension and not the brand. It’s role would be to compliment and not over-complicate. The vision of female energy we hoped to build was one focused on enhancing a culture and not distracting from the inclusion we hope to build for decades.
We explored shapes, colors, cultures, and history. We wanted to infuse women and allies with joy and and curiosity. We wanted the palette to be bold yet inviting and non-traditional.
Next we explored fonts ensuring that there were elements of strength, individuality, and shapes to capture the different sizes we all come into the world with. The hope was to ensure nuances were celebrated and not shunned.
However, constraints are a huge part of the creative process. Working in a big company, there are often times that we must be muted and less intense to fit the mold of big-picture communications or major forums. So next, we built out the basics. Elements like Zoom backgrounds, Spotlights to feature employees, and a simple black and white logo to get the job done and ensure we are ALWAYS represented.
Lastly, we built brand guidelines because if we never teach people how to express the brand, it won’t last.
One human truth I’ve learned behind all creative endeavors during my past decade spent in marketing is — creative expression is process of building emotional and cultural icons and artifacts. Each logo is a canvas to be iterated, exaggerated, and changed in time. This visual design for Women in Beer & Beyond isn’t timeliness. It won’t live indefinitely like the Tiffany blue box or Apple icon, but it is rooted in a beautiful fact. The fact of today — Women in the workplace are becoming more expressive, more thoughtful, and requiring inclusion like never before.
Thank you!
