This was a collaborative effort to help a small non-profit develop its identity from the ground up. Starting with only a family crest, we built a brand identity for the client along with several other branded collateral pieces. The project took place from March 2023 to June 2023.
The Llewellyn Foundation is a non-profit organization that was formed by my close friend, Gage Llewellyn. Gage formed the company in 2020 and has since raised money for donations to charitable causes through live music performances.
The Llewellyn Foundation previously lacked a brand identity and consequently had no branded material besides a logo, which was the CEO’s family crest. While beautiful as a standalone piece, it was ineffective as a logo, as it was not scalable and illegible at small sizes. The challenge was discovering a way to distill the logo in a way that still represented the foundation and using that to inform the branded material we would later create.
Throughout the development of the brand, we maintained consistent contact with the CEO, Gage Llewellyn, regularly receiving feedback and becoming familiar with the foundation’s values. The most significant breakthrough in the process was the development of the logo. It was challenging to distill a multi-faceted design such as a family crest. I eventually decided on the lamb and shield elements of the original design. These elements best represent the charitable nature of the foundation. The color palette was also directly influenced by the original family crest logo.
We began the project by ensuring that we were as organized as possible, detailing roles for each group member, establishing timelines, and a full creative brief. From there, most of our time was spent talking with Gage to better understand how the company should be visually portrayed. He was adamant about keeping the family crest, so it was up to us to find a way to distill the crest into a usable logo.
For the initial logo designs, I kept as many elements from the original as possible, particularly the lion and the dragon. However, the logo continued to feel busy and overwhelming or outright uninteresting. I pooled various sources of inspiration to create a simplified logo. Eventually, I concluded that the lamb and shield together best represented the charitable and secure aspects of the company while still maintaining a prominent feature of the original logo.
The final logo incorporated the shield and lamb aspects of the original, as those items best reflected the sense of security and sincerity that such a company should evoke. The color palette for the entire brand was also informed by the original family crest, and the crest itself was used as a background element on other branded material. This was an ideal solution that pleased the client, as they wanted to maintain their family crest, but they needed to be convinced to adopt a more scalable logo for their brand.
My team and I also created several branded collateral pieces for the foundation and developed a social media strategy and website mockup. The social media strategy was based on the foundation's use of music to connect and empower others through acts of charity. The slogan was "Dance for____" because the foundation doesn't donate to one specific cause.
The client previously only had an incomplete landing page on WordPress, This page only had a hero image and an unresponsive button. Using the branding we had established and by narrowing down the client's most prominent needs, we were able to create a site mockup that would streamline the company's efforts to connect with the community. The mockup consisted of several pages including a landing page, donations page, and a mission page.
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My team and I created branded collateral for the client, including business cards, a brochure, letterhead, and merchandise to give away at fundraising events. Check it out below!
To solidify the LlewellynFoundation’s identity, we distilled its logo to be more accessible, establisheda pleasing color palette, and produced several branded collateral items and awebsite that centralized the foundation’s most pertinent information.
