Australian Disability Rights Network
Client BrandingBrief
This university brief saw me placed in a random team and a client. The client needed us to create a new brand for their organisation: the Australian Disability Rights Network.
Description
The Australian Disability Rights Network (ADRN) are want to be the leading not-for-profit spokesperson for disability law updates, justice, and reform. Over the course of a semester, I led the team to creating a logo and visual system reflecting the ADRN’s mission and values. In this project I employed research methods to understand our client, had to deliver an easy-to-use design system for our clients, and overcome creative blocks.
Credits
- Russell Lee (team lead)
- Apurva Surendran, Jess Collishaw, Lachlan Coorey. Yibei Chen (team members)
- Kate Dilanchian (university studio leader)
What I did
- Branding & logo design
- Facilitating discussion & creative direction as a team lead
- Working with peers on feedback & hosting client meetings
- Mockups & brand collateral
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Illustrator
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Adobe inDesign
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Canva
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Figma
A capstone project over 12 weeks in Semester 2, 2024
Who are you and why are you different? Giving a voice to disability law advocacy and justice
The Australian Disability Rights Network (ADRN) is a group of community lawyers advocating for law reform to achieve justice for people with disabilities. On the surface, there are many other organisations that do what our client does – they are essentially a not-for-profit advocating for a social cause.So, what makes our client different from others that we could leverage as a brand?
What makes the ADRN set apart is that they are purely an outlet for updates and news regarding changes in the disability space – they are do not offer a legal advice like Legal Aid or other organisations.
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. But the ADRN themselves to have a recognisable and approachable brand that any lay Australian could access.
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, as a team, 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 had our hands tied behind our backs in needing to be conservative with creating designs to not misrepresent people with disabilities and without the opportunity to use photos.
Justice, advocacy, and equality – the logo that did not compromise
After rounds of rounds of our creative direction not being well received by our tutor, peers, and even members of our own group, we had to sit down and go back to the drawing board.Eventually, we broke through the creative block – with my proposal for a logo being well liked by the team.The logo brought together the ADRN’s values in combining elements of advocacy as quotation marks held in the balance of the scales of justice.