Student branding for the Australian Disability Rights Network
Brief
As part of a university capstone project, our team was tasked with creating a completely new brand identity that reflected the Australian Disability Rights Network (ADRN). ADRN wanted to establish itself as a leading not-for-profit voice for disability law updates, justice, and reform.
Main Challenge
Alongside working within a newly formed team over a 12-week semester and the usual challenges of design, several more challenges faced us – notably: the client not having any designers or design tools and the trickiness of designing in the visually-sensitive space of disability.
Solution
A simple and scalable visual system built in Canva that avoided misrepresenting people with disabilities while remaining easy for the client to use and apply consistently.
Credits
- Russell Lee (team lead)
- Apurva Surendran, Jess Collishaw, Lachlan Coorey. Yibei Chen (team members)
- Kate Dilanchian (university studio leader)
What I did
- Designed the client’s new logo
- Identified the client’s challenges and brand requirements early on
- Facilitated and initiated discussion & creative direction as a team lead
- Assigned roles according to team member’s strengths and perceived limitations
- Led the team in designing a scalable visual system
- Mockups & brand collateral
Timeline
A capstone project over 12 weeks in Semester 2, 2024
Tools
The ADRN is a group of community lawyers advocating for law reform to achieve justice for people with disabilities.
We employed a few design methods to determine the values of the ADRN and how our client wanted their brand to look. It was clear that our client lawyers were credible and well-informed in the field of disability law and rights, and our brand needed to reflect this.
How could we bring together their mission, values, credibility, and goals as a brand?
No budget, no designer, no misrepresentations. How I led the team to overcome our client’s challenges
Before jumping into creating a brand straight away, there were limitations with what we could create. We had to ensure that what we produce would and could actually be used by our client when handing it off eventually.
I highlighted to my team the two biggest challenges facing us:
1. Our non-designer client had little to no budget allocated for design softwares or a designer. How could our client actually use what we created?
2. We had to be careful to not misrepresent people with disabilities with our designs. Our client ruled the use of any stock imagery or photos.
We brainstormed solutions. First, it was for our client to use Canva, where they could easily manipulate pre-made templates designed by us for a range of possible content without needing to outsource the work.
However, we still needed to create a visual system which did not misrepresent people with disabilities. Unlike other teams, this immediately meant photos were ruled out for use – a key visual in uplifting a brand.