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NJ Community Conversations: Pandemic Perspectives

Storytelling Project Brand Identity + Logo Design + Marketing Design + Video

The New Jersey YMCA State Alliance undertook a massive research and storytelling project in 2021 to help collect, analyze, and report stories from residents of New Jersey on their experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and beyond. They reached out to me to help create a brand identity for the project that would help them throughout the project as they gathered stories and shared their findings with the public.

[Amber] created the visual identity for “Community Conversations: Pandemic Perspectives,” a statewide storytelling project to document the experiences of [New Jersey] residents during the COVID-19 pandemic and elevate their recommendations for future public health policies and programs. Amber collaborated closely with our team to ensure that every element - from the website hub and story vignettes, to reports and event signage - reflected the heart of community-centered storytelling in meaningful and compelling ways. Amber is also highly professional and responsive, and genuinely invested in her clients’ success. She brings warmth, creativity, and insight to every collaboration, and cares deeply about the people and stories behind the work.

- Julia Wieczorek - New Jersey YMCA State Alliance (Hamilton, New Jersey)

Branding a community impact storytelling project

Branding a project while the project was still being built

The NJ YMCA State Alliance reached out to me early in the process, well before they had the project details set in stone themselves but they were already in the process of collecting stories.

During the initial project kickoff, they mentioned that they wanted the project logo to have the feelings of resiliency, optimism, remembrance, and community, of which turned into their brand drivers for their brand identity project. They also wanted to use some colors and typography similar to their Y logo as well to tie the project to the Alliance.

I started work on quick logo concepts (due to time constraints) and sent them these concepts as an initial starting point. Since the project was underway but the official naming and other parts of the project were still in flux, these logos were designed to be a starting point to start getting elements together for what they wanted in their logo.

Resilency, optimism, remembrance, and community

After a couple of meetings with several people involved with the project, I presented a new round of logo concepts to incorporate several pieces of feedback. Some feedback included making the logo feel more unique to them, trying to add the state of New Jersey to the logo, the continued idea of using speech bubbles, and working with different taglines that were still being finalized.

This set of concepts helped us narrow down a more specific look that they were going for (in the top four), and we continued to refine one of the concepts (the second from the top in the left column). This concept felt the closest to what they were looking for in that it had the Y branding colors of blue and purple and the font they currently use along with the way it was laid out with the speech bubbles inside the state of New Jersey to represent the "conversations" coming from the "community."

It was also right after this set of concepts that they finalized their project name: Community Conversations: Pandemic Perspectives - NJ's COVID-19 Storytelling Project

Getting the new logo just right

With an enthusiastic movement toward one of the previous concepts, I went in and did refinements based on feedback from meetings with several people involved in the project. Some of that feedback included adding "NJ" possibly to the inside of the state, incorporating the more handwritten font used in previous versions, and working with the official tagline of the project. These concepts got us that much closer, and they chose a concept that was very close to the top right one in the group of five concepts.


Their final logo encompasses all their brand drivers and desires

The final logo represented all they wanted in their logo: community (state of New Jersey), conversation (speech bubbles and handwritten font), and optimism (blue and purple color choice and handwritten font). The logo closely aligned and compliments in color and fonts to their blue and purple Y logo.

Now their extensive storytelling project was official with the offical name and branding to go with it.

Laying down the logo rules and design aesthetics in a brand identity style guide

Not following my conventional style guide template for this project, I quickly put together a brand identity style guide for myself and the NJ YMCA State Alliance to understand the design rules and guidelines for their new logo. I wanted the style guide to showcase their new brand identity and how I was starting to use it, along with making sure they had the right colors, fonts, and names for their project so that everyone was on the same page and could use this brand identity style guide as a reference as the project progressed.

A full brand identity style guide was not developed due to time constraints, expected duration of the project, and the fact that all design work for the project was going to be completed by me.

A secondary branding element inside the main branding for the project

As you may have noticed in their brand identity style guide above, the last page features themes they wanted to have their own mini brands for. In the project, they categorized stories that they had into these main themes. Since the themes would be a very large part of their project and would be heavily integrated into things they were producing (such as their reporting and marketing pieces), I included them in the style guide as well.

Each theme has its own color separate from the main brand colors and still following the Y USA approved brand color schemes. Everything involving these themes are now given their own color to help keep stories organized, together visually, and showcase them together. The theme branding identities would come into larger play toward the end of the first project.

A unique community impact project with unique design needs

With most brand identity projects, most of the design work that follows after the initial brand identity is created are often the same needs, such as websites, business cards, social media graphics, etc. The Community Conversations project was unique in that the type of design work they needed varied greatly throughout the first phase of the project.

This is an example of the different types of design work that I created using their new brand identity to help them meet their design needs for the project. From a thank you card that was sent to participants, to website banners in varying languages, to virtual backgrounds for their Zoom/Teams meetings, and a webpage banner for their project page on their website. This was the first set of designs that utilized their new branding, and helped shape the branding for a larger part of the project that was coming up.

Creating videos and video wraps for their project and various stories

Once the NJ YMCA State Alliance received all their stories for the project, they wanted to create a video that showcased some of the stories, written words, and artwork that helped introduce the project to the public. I worked with them to pick the right stories, create the video and screen graphics, and did the captioning for their intro video. In the image, the screengrab at the top is from that introduction video.

You can watch the introduction video I produced for them here.

They then commissioned a series of animated videos to help tell some of the more compelling COVID-19 stories they received. They hired a video illustration company to produce those illustrations, but wanted them to be branded. I designed and created the video wraps that introduced and concluded each of their animated videos. The video wraps were designed based on one of the top six themes that the story belonged to and used that themes' colors and branding for those wraps.

You can see the animated videos with the wraps I created on their site here.

Designing a showcase to share the project at their annual conference

With their upcoming annual conference coming at a time where the first phase of the project was wrapping up, they worked on making the Community Conversations: Pandemic Perspectives a showcase of the conference. They wanted to bring the stories they've been collecting to the people that it would matter to – decision makers, political activists, and community leaders – all of whom would be in attendance at the conference. To help drive the point home, they invited several of the participants in the project to the conference to share their perspectives in person in various ways through storytelling, poetry, song, and art.

We got to work on the individual design pieces that would help make this showcase come to life. I designed themed banners to showcase each of the top six community themes and one story that came from each theme along with the program that would be for the showcase itself.

Not pictured is work done for the art gallery portion of the showcase, which was a separate area featuring replicas of artworks submitted into the project for attendees to see. I worked with them to help get these replicas printed and tagged, all with the Community Conversations: Pandemic Perspectives branding.


On-screen graphics to help guide the live showcase

To help wrap up their showcase, I designed their on-screen graphics that helped to introduce the project and the showcase, each participate in the showcase, the major community themes, additional speakers, and showing gratitude for participants. The showcase on-screen graphics followed the same brand identity as the rest of their project and helped to tie in everything attendees were seeing to the project itself.