Updating a Cherished Symbol

The founder of Orphan Outreach once remarked to us that he couldn’t believe how often people complimented him on his logo. RSW had designed his original mark that was still in use after fifteen years.

But naturally, as a company grows, and as the culture changes, even cherished symbols can have their limitations exposed. In this case, several items were at play:

• The founder’s impending retirement required a powerful message to stakeholders that the company was still boldly moving forward and in good hands
• Social media’s cultural influence had made the original mark more difficult to work with for the medium’s quickturn demands
• There was an opportunity to make quite a few fine-tuning adjustments for both print and digital to improve output and legibility at smaller sizes

Additionally, while the original mark subtly suggesting traveling overseas and ferrying orphans back, the new mark boldly carries orphans forward into a brighter future.

The identity system included a logo library with a variety of staging formats, as well as their new Legacy Fund and Orphan Outreach Marketplace program identities, updates to several existing program identities, international NGO identity extensions for each of the countries where Orphan Outreach works, and an updated iconography style to demonstrate the identity’s flexibility for different applications.