Social inequality in the capital, 125 years on

Poverty should be history… We’re helping make sure it is.

Toynbee Hall is a community organisation with a heritage to be proud of. Having worked to reduce poverty and disadvantage in London’s East End for more than 125 years, it has a great story behind it. It just needed a fresh way of telling it — and to a new audience. 

The organisation has seen great changes in East London over the last century. But despite the gentrification of the area in recent years, social inequality and wealth disparity are still painfully apparent. Unlike the neighbouring City of London, Tower Hamlets is one of the poorest areas in the country. So it stands to reason that Toynbee Hall’s work is just as relevant today as it was when the organisation was founded back in 1884.

Finding what matters

The team there asked us to help freshen up its brand and create an impact report highlighting how it’s going about tackling the problem of poverty that’s still so real in east London. 

We agreed that the logo needed a sympathetic refurbishment rather than a full reinterpretation.

It began with a workshop. We invited staff, volunteers and people who’d used Toynbee Hall’s services to take part, to help us understand what the organisation really means to them. We asked well-considered questions that would start to draw out a sense of the unique qualities of Toynbee Hall, to give us an insight into perspectives on the balance of its local and national work.

Since we were working within a restricted budget, the workshop gave us a great idea of which areas to focus on. During the session we learnt that Toynbee Hall’s ‘tree of life’ logo, designed by CR Ashbee towards the end of the 19th century, is much loved and stands as a symbol of heritage for the organisation. We agreed that the logo needed a sympathetic refurbishment rather than a full reinterpretation.

We redrew the logo in simple vector format and opened it up against a white background, allowing us to introduce a new dynamic colour palette.

Putting big issues back into the picture

It also became clear that a library of brand photography would be a fitting element of the refreshed  visual identity — and imagery was already high on everyone’s list of priorities. So we commissioned and art-directed a shoot to capture pictures of real people in real scenarios.

Rather than shooting stark or depressing images, we looked for the warmth of the personalities and interactions at Toynbee Hall and in the surrounding community.

While we were there, we commissioned and edited a series of short films that delve further into Toynbee Hall’s story and support the impact report online. The result is a set of images and videos that tell a story powerful enough to help it take on poverty and inequality on a wider social scale.

The deep margins and simple typographic hierarchy create a brand language that’s open and accessible, allowing the photography to take centre stage.

Amplifying impact

Impact reports were an important communication for the organisation, helping them to make a strong case for support. Bringing the template in line with the refreshed visual approach, we applied deep margins and simple typographic hierarchy to create a brand language that feels open and accessible, allowing the photography to take centre stage.

Toynbee Hall is determined as ever that poverty should be history. And now its brand would be as strong as its resolve.

Credible voice

Toynbee Hall doesn’t just work to alleviate poverty in its local area. Its legacy of experience makes it influential on national research and policy. With this in mind, we developed a bold, contemporary and credible voice for the organisation, clearly establishing its knowledge and authority while remaining conversational, human and relatable in tone.

We completed the brand refresh and impact report with a set of guidelines and document templates so that Toynbee Hall’s in-house communications team could work with their new identity independently.

Toynbee Hall is determined as ever that poverty should be history. And now its brand would be as strong as its resolve.

Read the report in full here:
www.toynbeehall.org.uk

Watch the videos here:
Looking back at 2013
How we’re increasing financial confidence