F4SG: City of London Corporation
Branding and website for a new sustainable initiative
The City of London Corporation approached az.design for a pitch proposal to create a brand for a new sustainable initiative called ‘Finance for Sustainable Growth’ or F4SG for short. They also needed an easy-to-update website and accessible PDF report for the new project. We won the pitch due to recommendations from other departments and colleagues within the City of London Corporation and meeting the budget requirements. See how we created a slick new platform for this brand-new initiative.
WORK CARRIED OUT
Logo design
Visual identity
Brand guidelines
Accessible report PDF
WordPress website design+build
The brief
The City of London Corporation approached az.design for a pitch proposal to create a brand and build a website for a new sustainable initiative with their partners in the North East – the initiative was called ‘Finance for Sustainable Growth’. We needed to provide something slick, user friendly and attention-grabbing to ensure the audience acted after seeing the website and initiative.
Strategy
We won the pitch due to recommendations from other departments and colleagues within the City of London Corporation as we have produced several reports for them in the past. This, alongside our promptness, willingness to discuss their requirements on a call, friendly rapport and competitive pricing is what helped us to stand out against our competitors.
The project had tight deadlines and included: branding, visual identity, brand guidelines PDF, an accessible report, and a website design and build. An aspect that made this project unique was the accessibility checks that the website and PDF needed to adhere to, due to it being a government initiative.
Results
“We now have a slick new platform, which looks great on top of being functional, as well as a great brand for our project.”
The final result is a functional, user friendly platform to generate interest of the ‘Finance for Sustainable Growth’ initiative and branding that stands out. The branding and website received fantastic praise from all partners involved in the project at the launch party. The client has since been able to add additional articles and posts on the site, helping it to grow even more traction and attention from the audience. The user-friendly site will help this government imitative to grow, with the team being able to add additional content whenever desired.
The Director of the Innovation & Growth department personally reached out to say he thought the design was great, which is something that has never happened before. At az.design to have such praise is one of the highest achievements.
“What made us happiest about working with az.design was the friendliness of Angela, flexibility with deadlines, changes and the direction and advice given by Angela with designing, amazing quality of the finished product.
I am particularly impressed with the design and the brand created for the project. Other websites have been created in the past and they did not look nearly as good.
I would recommend az.design because you get guaranteed quality of the finished product, as well as a smooth and pleasant working relationship with Angela.
If you are considering using az.design, expect a great finished product and trust Angela with her ideas!”
– INES RIGNI
Design deliverables
Logo design + visual identity
As the name of the initiative was really long, we went for shortened version – F4SG which sounds fresh and innovative as well as being memorable to anyone wanting to visit the website. The domain was also available.
A simple container logo mark was created to denote the supportive nature of the initiative. We also placed it on the diagonal for a fresh perspective. Seeing the bigger picture, we created a label quality that could then be attached to other projects. The locked in logo also had to work alongside the City of London Corporation logo.
A colour palette of vibrant green and black was chosen with a zing of neon yellow to work with the innovative sustainable initiatives promoted on the website. Similarly, a modern, sans serif font – Barlow Condensed was used for the typography.
Icons/illustrations and suitable stock imagery were then sourced and placed in the brand assets suite to be used across report, website and press releases for the project. This formed part of the brand toolkit along with all the logo assets and brand guidelines document.
Accessible PDF report
A 16-page report was commissioned, supplied in PowerPoint format. Bespoke illustrations, icons and charts were created to help decipher the stats and figures in a visual manner.
Due to it being a government initiative and commissioned by City of London, the PDF and website needed to follow accessibility checks. This means that specific measures need to be adhered to for it to pass tests.
There was a tight deadline of one week to turn the report around prior to launch of website, which was met.
WordPress website design+build
Design concepts were first created for the site and approved by COLC and partners. Then the build stage was undertaken with az.design associates Coopa.net. The site was then bespoke built in WordPress CMS to WCAG 2AA standards to comply with accessibility.
All content was supplied by client and then uploaded with imagery and graphics by az.design. Training was then included so that client could add new posts and articles once site was live so they could continue to contribute to their initiative.
The website was built within timeframes that the client had specified and to an extremely high standard with all parties involved extremely happy with the outcome.
