BACKGROUND
Maribyrnong and Moonee Valley LLEN (mmvllen) brings education, industry and community together to create positive futures for young people with barriers to employment. They offer a range of opportunities that inspire, give practical experience and foster future thinking with the community. They are passionate about creating a lasting impact and believe a community thrives when it invests in its young people.
PROJECT
To design and develop a new brand mark for all print and digital collateral; as well as constructing a new responsive website with simple, effective and intuitive navigation. The branding and website had to appeal to the main target audience: the young people that mmvllen assist after finishing high school, but it also needed to appeal to government and corporate businesses; who’s help mmvllen rely upon to develop new and exciting programs.
SOLUTION
Mmvllen required a brand that would work on all digital media (their website being their main hub), printed collateral and promotional items. A simple, easily recognisable brand that depicted the caring and local knowledge of the organisation; a brand that included an 'icon' and ‘lock-up’ text. ‘Nunito’ and ‘Nunito Sans’ with their soft corners and simple form, were the fonts chosen for their casual friendliness, their simplicity and legibility. The typeface is an 'OpenType' font and benefits from its cross-platform compatibility (the same font file works on all systems.) The colour pallet was retained from the existing brand but reduced to three colours to make it simple to use and recognisable throughout all collateral. The icon was designed in multiple colours so it could contrast on all backgrounds.
When developing the new website for mmvllen, the language that would be used was of utmost importance. The website had to relate to mmvllen’s younger student audience and so Cooke Creative rewrote the website in a language that the target market could relate to. The images are sourced from the mmvllen library, but Cooke Creative cropped, optimised and colour enhanced the images to better highlight the various different programs offered. The navigation is simple and intuitive. The website is linked to mmvllen’s CRM ‘salesforce’ with all forms stored into the database and donations are accepted through a payment gateway.
CHALLENGES
The main challenge in delivering the new brand mark for mmvllen was to develop a brand that could incorporate the letters of the organisation, works as a design lock-up, and would gain the boards approval. Copy (with numerous links to helpful external websites) and usable photographic assets were challenging to implement when developing the website. Connecting directly to salesforce was probably the toughest test but this was overcome by working in collaboration with the client, Salesforce, Zapier and Squarespace.
RESULTS
The website is still and will always be evolving. Initial feedback from the audience was very positive and a photographic shoot is planned to further enhance the look of mmvllen heading into the future.
From the client
“Cooke Creative delivered a vibrant, modern, simple and intuitive site, which we are confident will help our brand awareness and community impact.”
”We had a recent networking event to celebrate our 21st anniversary and there were lots of compliments about our reinvigorated brand and website - it has definitely helped elevate our profile and increase our professionalism.”
