A case study by mrozilla.cz
New visual style for 30,000 people
ESN is the key volunteer student organisation in international higher education in Europe. We provide opportunities for cultural understanding and self-development under the principle of SHS — Students Helping Students.
The visual system of Erasmus Student Network was already 4 years old in 2014 when we have slowly started transforming it together with Robert Klimacki — ESN’s Communication Manager at that time.
We’ve decided in the very beginning that the project is not going to be a complete rebrand, instead we aimed at polishing up the current state:
- Clarify the usage of the visuals even for non-designers.
- Create simple-to-use templates for various materials.
- Bring all files and templates together in one central brand package.
The colours
ESN was proudly flying under 5 colours derived from its logotype for many, many years, and there was no reason to change them. Hell, in the end, we didn’t touch them at all.
Instead, it was the way they were used in the organisation we focused on.
They were often used all at the same time, usually ending in a circus-like feeling. As many things in ESN come in multiples of 5 (there are 5 International Board members, 5 Committees, etc.), we have started to sneakily manipulate the bodies in ESN into choosing one or two colours to stand distinct from the others.
The whole process was a lot more like convincing your friends they should totally join you to go watch a movie they are not excited about. There’s a fine mixture of sweet-talking, convincing, negotiating, and blackmailing involved, all of which has very little to do with the actual design.
The colour overlay effect was introduced to make it easy to create strong-looking visuals with minimum effort.
The typography
The fonts used in ESN were one big mess. Magda Clean Regular — the official font at that time — has become the “Comic Sans” of the organisation and every designer was introducing their own beloved fonts for their own designs.
Choosing a new font to be used by 30,000 is hard on its own but there was one more thing to consider. Multiple alphabets. Our new font had to work in extended Latin, Cyrillic and Greek as well. Did I mention that it also had to be a free font? Oh, great….
We’ve built a simple tool to help us test all of the candidate fonts—and some strong candidates didn’t make it :(
Ultimately, we’ve decided to go with Kelson Sans, a lovely humanist sans-serif, coming in three weights, and perfectly fitting our needs for a memorable headline font. After some discussion we’ve decided it should be accompanied by Lato as the body copy font, mainly thanks to its exquisite coverage of the required alphabets (and some more while we were at it).
Don’t stress about paying for a font. Use fonts.google.com or fontsquirrel.com, there’s some great stuff for free as well.
The Visual Identity Manual
ESN’s Visual Identity Manual (or VIM) was rebuilt from the bottom up, together with the members of ESN’s Corporate Identity Team we’ve taken the rules apart, put their clarity to a test, added examples, and redesigned the whole thing. By the time were done with it, the document’s 44 pages were covering:
- Definition of the logotype as it was made
- Usage of the logotype, including safe zones, colour variants, etc.
- Definition of the ESNstar as a separate element
- Usage of the ESNstar, including safe zones, colour variants, etc.
- Definition of the typography and the visual style
- Implementation rules for various levels of the organisation
In 2016, we’ve developed a new block explaining the usage of the visual identity in videos and animation — in response to the growing production of the motion pictures in ESN.
The visual identity manual will always be an ever-growing document for the organisation.
The Brand Package
I still remember that moment, having the new visual identity ready to be launched. We were not done, though. After the official launch at the AGM Ankara (a general assembly of the organisation with more than 700 volunteers) we followed up with continuously releasing elements of the ESN Brand Package, reigniting the interest of the people every month.
Releasing the new versions of the most requested elements of the visual identity — such as a template for presentations or template for social media posts — one by one instead of all at once brought the new visual style into the spotlight multiple times instead of just one “boom” moment.
The learnings
In an organisation this huge, there will never be a moment where every single person is using the new visual identity correctly. The only thing we can do is to make the change a little bit easier. They will get to it, there’s no reason to stress about it.
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