Unknown Speaker  0:00  
When you get 30 people in a room, there are going to be people who love it and people who hate it and people who love everything except this one thing. And other people are like, that's the only thing that I liked about it. So there was a really large range of reactions. For sure. I think the overall feeling in the room was that this was really promising and really strong and exciting for them. You know, you could see that they were excited about the possibility of having all these tools in their toolkit and excited to see how they could use them. But that really was just the beginning. It wasn't that day, as if we had sold at and now we were done with the beginning of many months of consensus building and conversations. You know, I'm not sure if there was a single moment when we realized everything was going through.

Blake Howard  0:59  
Hey, everyone, welcome to a change of brand, a show featuring behind the scenes stories of rebrand glory, drama, or disaster. I'm your host, Blake Howard. Today's episode is a bit different. I've been looking for a great nonprofit story to tell for a while and Wow, is this a good one? I could not be more excited to talk today about the ACLU rebrand of 2017.

Unknown Speaker  1:25  
People think the ACLU is a very left wing organization. I remember when George Herbert Walker Bush was running against Michael Dukakis for president. And he kept saying that Michael Dukakis was a card carrying ACLU member as if he's he's way too liberal for this country.

Unknown Speaker  1:45  
Did the Civil Liberties Union supply you with an attorney? They didn't supply an attorney? The answer is yes. You know, the Civil Liberties Union has been listed as a front for undoing the Communist Party.

Unknown Speaker  1:56  
So it got that reputation but it really doesn't deserve it. The ACLU is first obligation is to defend the Bill of Rights, which includes freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, they stand for that that's how they became the ACLU.

Blake Howard  2:14  
You will be hard pressed to find a nonprofit that has impacted our society as much as this organization for close to 100 years the ACLU has defended Americans right to free expression and assembly. They have helped defend certain people or groups within America once that sometimes become extremely unpopular, or have controversial opinions entities such as American Nazis, the Klu Klux Klan and the Nation of Islam. Now, their posture is not to defend them because they agree with their values. Rather, they defend their right to free expression and free assembly, according to the Constitution. And they believe that people whose opinions are most controversial or extreme are the people whose rights are most often threatened. And once the government has the power to violate one person or one group of people's rights, it can use that power against everyone. So they work to stop the erosion of civil liberties before it's too late. Besides their intense dedication to our Constitution, they're also a $300 million dollar organization, not your typical not for profit. And what's interesting to me about this rebrand challenge is the complexity of audiences. How do you strategically align an organization with so many disparate stakeholders? When by definition, according to the organization's mission, there is an obligation to build a brand for all Americans? And how do you do that? I mean, it needs to be credible in the legislation and the judicial world. It needs to appeal to those whose rights are threatened or maybe have been compromised, potentially over a controversial topic and needs to appeal to Republicans, Democrats, minorities, majorities, wealthy donors, regular donors, foundations, corporations, and more. In fact, it reminds me of a Seth Godin quote that says, when you make something for everyone, it is by definition, average in this has average potential written all over it. How will they make a system quote for the people? And the answer they land on is far from average. In fact, the process is quite risky and brave as you'll learn, and I think the work is really smart routing every design decision in a strategic thought to get more on the history of the ACLU and what led up to a rebrand let's go to brand strategist Sarah Gail Hughes for our brief in

Unknown Speaker  4:38  
the American Civil Liberties Union, largely known as the ACLU has played a pivotal role in the legal history of the United States for the last century. They have been a part of more Supreme Court cases than any other private organization, diligently fighting for freedom and liberty for all. They continue to strive towards that ideal day after day and have built a truly extraordinary presence in our country and its legal system. The ACLU was founded in 1920 by a committee of 11 people. This group made up of activist authors, lawyers, professors, sociologists, social workers, was concerned about the civil liberties of Americans within a political climate defined by fear. You see, our nation was emerging from the First World War, there was a lot of concern around the spread of communism to America. Some people call this the first Red Scare in November of 1919. In January of 1920, there had been a series of raids and arrests that are now known by the name of the Palmer Raids. They're actually named after the attorney general that ordered them Alexander Michel Palmer, the rates targeted suspected radicals, leftist communist and our guest that were largely immigrants. And after their arrest, Palmer worked to try to deport them from the United States. The treatment of these individuals was brutal and their arrests were without warrants. The ACLU founders believed these rates to be a violation of individual's rights, specifically the constitutional search and seizures protection. Now over time, they've expanded their focus to a lot of different types of freedoms. Over the past 100 years, the ACLU has been a part of the fight for individual's right to speech, due process privacy, religion, marriage equality, and so many other issues. They played a pivotal role in historical cases like the Scopes Trial, Brown versus Board of Education, Roe versus Wade, it's honestly difficult to communicate the impact of this organization on our legal system, and even on our cultural understanding of individual's rights. Today, over 100 years after its conception, the ACLU has more than 1.7 million members. Their offices throughout the nation are filled with staff and volunteer attorneys doing the hard work of defending civil liberties. They take on about 2000 cases each year, while being the largest public interest law firm in the country. They're also a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that mainly operates on membership dues, donations, contributions and grants. In 2014, the ACLU began to strategically consider who they were. They wanted to be an organization that didn't just exist in the courtroom, but further their mission in the country at large. This meant engaging new platforms like social media protests, television, they wanted to mobilize citizens and generate grassroots movements all in the name of their mission, fighting for civil liberties. First, they began by addressing the way they communicated. And then they decided it was time to shift their visual identity. As a political climate was heating up, they determined 2017 was the right time to launch their new look. But the task at hand was a tricky one. The new identity needed to honor the long legacy of the organization and needed to appreciate and not lose the widespread brand recognition they had. And the new identity needed to be very, very accessible. They didn't want any design decision, you know, color type size, to get in the way of organizational participation and effectiveness. Ultimately, they needed a highly inclusive and accessible brand, a visual representation of their identity and ideals as an organization to expand their audience and reach and more accurately represent who they were. And the motivation. They work towards a nation with freedom and liberty for all. The ACLU knew it was the right time for a change in brand.

Blake Howard  8:40  
Okay, so in 2016, the ACLU was wanting to broaden its message to appeal to more than just the courtroom and to empower grassroots movements. They were expanding their strategy and felt limited by their visual identity. They hired open a design firm based out of New York City with a good track record of solving brand challenges for similar groups, more on them in a minute. The updated visual identity that we're going to discuss today is very different. The logo change from a literal depiction of the Statue of Liberty with her face tightly cropped in a box to a bold, tightly spaced wordmark, which also dropped to the full name American Civil Liberties spelled out just below it. The blue is relatively maintained for the brand but the visual system becomes much more inclusive with a wider set of colors to work with. Imagery is styled with some of those more vivid colors and an engraved treatment to give a very graphic and historic look at the same time. When you look at the new brand identity, you really get a sense of variety that it holds and that it dances right on the edge of inconsistency. Be sure to see the change of brand for yourself at a change of brand calm. Just click on this episode and scroll down to see the breakdown. To get the inside scoop on this story. I had a chance to sit down with Martha King McGill, one of the designers from open the creative lead on the project to get her take on this story. Martha came to open just after finishing her master's in graphic design at Yale University, where the founder of open Scott Stillwell was one of our professors. And she's been there ever since close to seven years, just a few years into her role at open the opportunity to work with the ACLU circulated throughout the studio. And they were really excited about the potential project.

Unknown Speaker  10:21  
We were all I think card carrying members of the ACLU beforehand. So we're really familiar with the organization. I certainly had been donating to the ACLU for a while. So when we heard that they were interested in the new visual identity, we all you know, our ears definitely picked up. It was in early fall 2016. So immediately before the 2016 presidential election, in September, right at the time when everybody was thinking, oh, you know, the ACLU, I'm glad they're keeping on Obama. And I hope they still do that with the Clinton presidency, they probably were not as prominent as an organization in that particular season as they are now. But I distinctly remember it being excited about it all the same.

Blake Howard  11:14  
How did you all close the deal? You know, like, how did you become the ones to lead a major rebranding effort for a huge nonprofit.

Unknown Speaker  11:24  
So this was an unusual situation in that the ACLU was already working, they had already hired another agency, co collective, also based in New York to work on the verbal elements of their identity. So they wanted a new tagline and a new kind of purpose statement of some sort. So they were already working with CO. And I think it became apparent at some point in their project with CCO that they really wanted a visual element to this kind of rebranding process that they were going through, and that it was time for a new logo. So CCO reached out to our studio open to see if we would be interested in partnering with them. And I believe they did reach out to some others, but they were just aware of our work and thought that it would be a good fit for the project. And we said, Yeah, count us in. And that was kind of it.

Blake Howard  12:14  
So the ACLU has hired co collective to help evolve their strategy and message and CO being a fan of opens work, brought them to the table. And I was curious if Martha could expand more on the problem that they were brought in to solve. The reason why they had started

Unknown Speaker  12:29  
this rebranding process to begin with, is because they realize that their work was starting to shift. You know, the ACLU, at the time was nearly 100 years old already, and had built a strong reputation on bringing civil rights litigation, and, and winning, you know, and advocating for civil liberties in the courts, and through legal channels. But increasingly, they were turning to their members to be more active, to go out and protest, to know their rights to equip themselves with information, sign petitions, and so forth. So became more of a grassroots organizing organization, on top of all of the legal work that they of course continued to do. They also found themselves communicating more via social media, and they were communicating visually more with their members than they ever had before. And they just didn't have the tools in their toolkit to do that. They had really strong, clear logo that had been designed for them in 2001. By Sylvia Harris and fo Wilson, it was a well known recognized logo type was Indian, and it was blue, and it had the Statue of Liberty and it had been around for, you know, more than 15 years, they had that. But at the time, when that was developed in 2001, or 2002, the identity guidelines came with pretty minimal instructions for what to do when you're designing some like a poster or something like that. And of course, letterhead they had, but not much else. So the ACLU designers were kind of on their own, trying to construct a system out of thin and blue, which isn't a lot to work with. So they needed more tools in their toolkit to really communicate well, in this era of social media and digital communication. The favorable aspects of the identity that Ko was working on, they had already determined by the time we got involved a new tagline, which was We the People, so we had that as also part of the brief that it would have to go with the spirit of that tagline and kind of this positioning statement that they have of we that people dare to create a more perfect union was also something that they had developed with CO so those two elements also injected a lot of the attitude and spirit so that was already part of the brief at this

Blake Howard  15:01  
point, as Martha has mentioned, the existing ACLU logo has been around for 15 years, and was designed by a well known and respected designer, the late and great Sylvia Harris. And not to mention it depicted the beloved Statue of Liberty. It's also worth noting that Lady Liberty has been in their logo from the beginning, except for about a 17 year stint during the 80s and 90s. So surely, there was some apprehension about changing a logo that was so symbolic,

Unknown Speaker  15:29  
I think there were a lot of staff members who were interested in removing it, just because they had seen kind of a trend towards logo types in general, you know, in the world. And also, because the Statue of Liberty tends to be associated with immigration rights specifically. And of course, that is one of the ACL use key areas of focus, but it's certainly not their only key area of focus. So that, you know, they work in so many different areas. So the other thing is that the Statue of Liberty is really associated with New York. And the ACLU is main office is based in New York, but they have I think it's 53 other offices all across the country, in every state of the union and a few in California. So they're really a diverse network of organizations, not a single organization. And that Statue of Liberty works better for some affiliates than it does for others.

Blake Howard  16:26  
Okay, so the open team has a clear brief and a clear problem to solve for the ACLU identity. And they're ready to go, they got a download from CO collective and more context on their strategy and messaging work up to that point, as well as a look at their research from various ACLU stakeholders. And then they just got to work.

Unknown Speaker  16:43  
We did a bunch of research, we wanted to make sure that whatever we came up with would have resonance for the ACLU as an institution. And also, you know, their work is ultimately defending the US Constitution and the civil liberties that are guaranteed in the Constitution and the amendment. So there's so much history there, we don't want to come in with something that just looks hip and cool, but doesn't tie in with who they are as an organization and who they've been for 100 years. And you know, what this country is and what it's been. So we needed those links. So we just started researching. We looked through their archives, we looked through a lot of information from the Supreme Court, since ultimately, that's where many of their cases end up. And much of their work is performed. We just started from from that, and also from, of course, looking at what else was happening in the world and protests that quickly started happening. I mean, so I should say that this project started in September of 2016. But our first presentation was at some point in November 2016. So you know, when we started the project, we thought, Oh, this is gonna be great. This is an organization we believe should be around always, no matter what. And a few weeks into it, we realized this is a project that has even more meaning to us and to the world. And so, yeah, we were looking around at what was happening in the world at the same time, all the protests, Women's March, at the same time as casting our eye back at history, and trying to fuse those things together

Blake Howard  18:22  
a project of the size, scale and significance, I would imagine, it would be a pretty close working and collaborative relationship between open and ACLU, like weekly calls, discussions around creative strategy, mood boards, sketches, hunches. Surely, it was meeting overload.

Unknown Speaker  18:38  
We just had one meeting, our very first meeting with the ACLU was the meeting where we presented our strategy and the visuals. At the same time, it was just one big meeting. And there were dozens of people in the room. I mean, I guess, exactly, but maybe 30 people in the room at that presentation. And we just introduced ourselves said, Hey, we're the folks who are doing the visual aspects of this identity. And here's our strategy. And here's what it looks like. There was only one option, and we left it and presented it.

Blake Howard  19:16  
Martha, y'all are crazy. That's amazing. I love the first time you met them. You also presented their new logo. That is so bold. What tell me more about why he did mention that you all felt like you had nailed it. And there was some time pressure. Were those the two reasons really that drove that approach, if sort of all your eggs in one basket?

Unknown Speaker  19:39  
Yeah, I think so. And also just because of the groundwork that had been done by CO we had all this information about what the ACLU was looking for, what their goals were, what their strategy was, as an organization moving forward and how they wanted to communicate differently with their audiences, and kind of what the pain points were for them as well. of working that way they were working up until that point. And so it was just that a lot of the work we would ordinarily do as a studio had already been done by our partners. We presented the work first CO, and workshop did a little bit with them for sure. And said, given everything that, you know, having worked with the ACLU for all these months, and all of your research and all your strategy, what do you think is this on the right track, and we definitely made some adjustments and tried some different things with them. And when we were comfortable, our two teams together, that's when we went in and presented to the ACLU.

Blake Howard  20:37  
Okay, so the open team has really risked it. They've combined all of their strategic thinking and visual updates into one, pressure filled a presentation to show the ACLU team, the first time they met, I assumed it went something like Hello, I'm your designer. And here's your new logo. This is definitely akin to the olden days of how mid 20th century design legends presented their work. We don't hear stories like this that often today, this approach is super risky, because at this point open has invested a significant amount of time into their work, which this is already on a tight timeline. So we've heard. So what happens if the ACLU doesn't go for it, imagine having to start all over from scratch at this point, that would not be good for open. And that would not be good for the ACLU. I was curious to dig in a bit more into that big presentation moment, where it's sort of all on the line. And to learn more of what that was like.

Unknown Speaker  21:34  
It was a big conference room, there was no conference table, there was just a lot of chairs. And we didn't know who a lot of the people were they just nailed in and took their seats, and everyone was chatting with each other. And yeah, we were definitely nervous as you always are, because you hope everything goes over well and want the thing that you really think should succeed to succeed. It's always a little nerve racking to see if people will get it if it'll resonate with them. If it'll mean something to them. It's always just a guess that it will after that initial presentation, there were a lot of working meetings with various working groups at the ACLU. So kind of that initial presentation was just one big pitch. But after that, it became a much more collaborative process. And you know, the ACLU was really closely involved in every little tiny decision about color values and exactly the shape of the logo and so forth. So we had a lot of a close, collaborative working relationship with the ACLU as time went on, but that first presentation, we were just kind of the New Kids on the Block who came in and said, This is what your new logo looks like. And this is why

Blake Howard  22:45  
Okay, when we come back from the break, we learn how the ACLU team responds to opens bold, one option, all eggs in one basket type of presentation. Will there vertic be good, or try again, all that more after the break.

Hey, everyone want to take a quick minute and give a big old hat tip to match tickets where I work and our producing partner for the show. We specialize in helping growing brands take their identity to the next level. If you need help clarifying your message or standing out in the market. Be sure to visit us at matchstick calm that's ma tch sti c.com. And one more quick thing if you're a fellow brand nerd like me, and you're enjoying this series so far, be sure to tell a friend or leave us a review. If you do decide to leave us a review, you will have a chance to win some sweet matchstick swag. I will personally choose one or two reviews to be our winners each week. So be sure to hang on to the end of today's episode to hear this week's winners. Okay, back to the show. Next up, Martha walks us through the work and why they felt so confident in this one approach and buckle up because there is a lot to hear. And as a spoiler, they routed their work in six, we are statements and this sets up their overall visual strategy. It's a unique approach. And after hearing this, I sort of understand why they only presented one direction.

Unknown Speaker  24:14  
We had a big discussion afterwards. There were lots of questions, lots of feedback, I would say as an organization, you know, every company or organization has its own culture. And the culture at the ACLU is definitely one where probably not unsurprisingly, people feel empowered to share their opinions. And they feel that everybody's opinion is important and should be heard. So it's really one much more of consensus. You know, the spirit of consensus is really important there. I think compared to some other organizations where decisions are much more top down, you know, and then everyone has to sign on afterwards or just go along afterwards. This was this was much more of an open discussion. So we had a lot of comments, a lot of feedback right away. And of course there were people who, when you get 30 people in a room, there are going to be people who love it, and people who hate it and people who love everything except this one thing. And other people are like, that's the only thing that I liked about it. So there was a really large range of reactions. For sure. I think the overall feeling in the room was that this was really promising and really strong and exciting for them, you know, you could see that they were excited about the possibility of having all these tools in their toolkit and excited to see how they could use them. But that really was just the beginning. It wasn't that day, as if we had sold that. And now we were done with the beginning of many months of consensus building and conversations, you know, I'm not sure if there was a single moment when we realized everything was going through,

Blake Howard  25:48  
can you kind of walk us through a little bit about the work specifically, you know, thoughts on the logo, even some of the way that I've seen Scott presented before with the attributes or sort of the personality words that led up to that maybe walk us through a little bit of of the work and why you felt so confident in it being the direction.

Unknown Speaker  26:06  
I mean, I would say more than any other project that we've done. This work was really strategic, you know, for being a project that we presented, the strategy and the visuals all in one it, you know, the strategy really did come first internally, where we thought about the qualities that the ACLU has and wanted to project and share with the world. So we came up with a few kind of guiding principles or ideas that for us really summarize the ACLU. And then we thought about how those principles would manifest themselves visually. So the principles in the end were and I think these were the ones that we presented that day. First, we are resolute. So as an organization, the ACLU takes a stand and is very clear about its stance on civil liberties on every issue. And you might agree with them on some and not on others, but they as an organization are really clear that they're there to protect civil liberties. So with that, we looked at the visual history of protests and protest posters, particularly at the civil rights era. Seeing the protest posters from the Civil Rights era, there was just a lot of sans serif, grotesques condensed, really simple, straightforward. I know, if you can all call to mind that one poster, I am a man, that was one that was really inspirational to us, but so many of them from that era. And so that influenced the typographic direction of the identity system. The next idea was we are patriotic. So this was a really big one for us. And I think also big for the ACLU, it was probably the most important one, which is that, you know, before the logo had been blue, and although I think many Democrats, many liberals and progressives think that the ACLU is kind of a democratic organization, they're really not, they are a nonpartisan organization. And they, for example, will defend the Second Amendment, you know, the Second Amendment isn't important to them, too. And might, they might kind of come down on the side of gun rights compared to what many other blue organizations would do. So our first point is that they shouldn't just be blue, you know, there's also red. But then what we said to them is, you're not just blue, but you're not just red either. And you're not even just red, white, and blue, you're red, everything in blue. And we need to make room in our patriotic color palette for all of the colors of the rainbow and make room for everybody. And that was really symbolic, I think, for us and for them, because this identity would be opening them up, freeing them a little bit and helping them express visually what they had been doing for quite a while already making room for for everybody and everything in their work. So the color palette, you know, building on this idea of patriotism was that red and blue should lead the way and should be part of every graphic. But at least one other color should appear in every graphic as well. So you wouldn't have things that are all blue are all red or even red, white and blue. That'd be a larger variety, more vibrancy to their communications as a whole.

Blake Howard  29:38  
I love that color is such a indicator of personality, but then also so associated with certain things and with the ACLU being in controversial topics or being viewed as a partisan organization when it's actually bipartisan. I felt like the way y'all solved that was so was so brilliant, and so inspiring.

Unknown Speaker  29:58  
Thanks. Yeah, and we also So, you know, I mean, this was 2016. I mean, at the time, it seemed that the divide between red states and blue states had never been deeper, I don't know. Looking back at it now, I don't know if that's the case. But it just seemed this new era of division in in our country. And it was important to us that the ACLU, in fighting for civil liberties, made clear that they were fighting for everybody. And I think it was important to them as well, certainly in that first presentation that day, afterwards, in that discussion, we had afterwards with the staff, one woman said that, when we got to that part of the presentation, she started crying, just because it had so much personal meaning for her. So that's when we knew, Okay, this, this has emotional resonance with a lot of people. And, you know, this is definitely the right direction. We also said, we are historic. So the ACLU, as I mentioned, has been around for now, 100 years. And they are really focused on the Constitution, which has been around for the whole history of the United States. So for this element, we wanted to inject a little bit of history into the image treatments, and how images were represented in their communications. So we developed a filter, so to speak, for images that would convert map them and turn them into a looks like an engraving, made of lines of varying thickness. We call it the modern engraving, because it doesn't look exactly like an engraving from the 18th century, but it's similar. And it has the same idea that you know, just as an engraving creates an image from lines of varying thickness, this does as well, they're just all straight lines. So you know, that has a connection to history, but it has a much more contemporary feel, and fits in with other things that were going on in visual culture at the time. But it was also a really practical solution for them. Because they like so many other organizations often have to resort to using stock photos, and try as you might, it's really hard to find stock photos that are gonna look particularly good. And in your social media posts. So the modern engraving treatment was something that they could do to take things up a level, and also make their communications more recognizable, you know, if it's a stock photo, they can buy it. And so can some organization working, you know, at cross purposes to them could buy the same very same image. But this modern engraving treatment would be something more proprietary and recognizable. for them.

Blake Howard  32:41  
It is always a little sad, when you see like the same person giving a speech as like the stock photo and you you're like, Yeah, I know, that photo, I just saw that on this billboard downtown or the right. And a lot of people don't understand the the intent is not to have some sort of highbrow design system where we have to custom shoot everything, but it's, it's a proprietary asset for your organization that no one else can use, it's more about having an asset for your communications than trying to, you know, put handcuffs on a creative team or, you know, force them to spend too much money or whatnot. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  33:20  
and, you know, I think the other thing about stock photos is that they're just symbols as just a symbol, you can take a little bit more liberty with it, you know, and giving it a visual treatment, I think, also is a signal that this isn't about the particularities of this photo, and who is in it and, and what's in the background. It's just what it symbolizes, what it stands for, what we said to the ACLU was that they shouldn't use the modern engraving, when they do have a photo, you know, that shows somebody at a real protest, or, you know, on the steps of the Supreme Court celebrating after marriage equality, you know, if they took that photo, they can use that full color, you know, you don't need to apply the modern engraving every time. Or, you know, oftentimes they'll maybe put out photos of their clients who they're representing in court. And let's use a real photo of those of those people. Because those that person's identity really matters. It's not just the stand in for an idea. So it's a real human being. I love that. That's great. The the two other principles that I think are really important, we also said, we are serious, because you know, with this kind of these fun colors and this Photoshop action, and our sans serif typeface, things could look had had a certain visual quality to it. But we needed to also recognize that the ACLU is at heart, essentially a law firm, and they are some of the, you know, foremost legal experts about civil liberties, and most of their work takes place in the courtroom. And so we want wanted to make sure that that kind of gravitas was part of the visual system as well. So we added a secondary type face type family century, which we discovered, actually, in reading the rules of the Supreme Court that anybody who submits a brief to the Supreme Court must typeset their brief in Century some member of the century family. And so it is the it is the typeface of the Supreme Court. So we thought we would use that as well. Bonus century, actually, century schoolbook. It's a system font, so everyone's got it PC, Mac everybody has, it doesn't really matter what software you use, you've got some version of the century schoolbook family. So in an organization that has many 1000s of employees across many different states, and they actually all work for different organizations, each of their affiliates is an independent organization from all of the others. So for licensing purposes, it makes a lot more sense to use this system font like century

Blake Howard  36:02  
Do you remember who discovered that typeface was spelled out in the filing requirements for the Supreme Court?

Unknown Speaker  36:09  
Way back in grad school, I had done a project about Korematsu versus the United States, which is the Supreme Court case, condoning allowing the internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two. And I had done this project and my roommate was a law student. And she told me that, oh, you should consider century all. All briefs for the Supreme Court are in century so. So it's actually something that I had remembered from grad school.

Blake Howard  36:39  
I love that. I love how you just never know the little factoids, or research how they will surface and become helpful. That's really cool. I had pictured someone like an intern on your team scouring just like reams of data and old court documents with big like hand signatures, and then eventually they get to the line that says, must use century in that it was like they went running down the hall with papers flying, Martha, you got to see this, you gotta see this.

Unknown Speaker  37:08  
I wouldn't have been a better story for sure. But I don't know, who would have even guessed that the Supreme Court cares what

Blake Howard  37:15  
I never have guessed that they cared. But you know, I guess you don't want a really important filing in curls. You know, like,

Unknown Speaker  37:26  
Yeah, but I mean, they're all big time lawyers who are filing these briefs. So you got to imagine that they would just choose Times New Roman, or Garamond, or something. Yeah,

Blake Howard  37:35  
you don't have to worry about Comic Sans coming in you and think but maybe they they occasionally would get like the goofy lawyer who that was like their thing, you know, they would always try to lighten the load. But he's in concert, we

Unknown Speaker  37:48  
don't know if there are any goofy lawyers who make it to the Supreme Court.

Blake Howard  37:54  
That's fair.

Unknown Speaker  37:56  
But I was really happy also that it wasn't Times New Roman, or something like that, that it was century, which has always been one of my favorite typefaces. And it has so much personality to it, but also history. If the Supreme Court had specified Times New Roman, I'm not sure. Maybe we would have we probably would have stuck with it, but so nice that they instead specify such a handsome.

Blake Howard  38:19  
Yes, yeah. Thank you, whoever specified that at some point in history.

Unknown Speaker  38:23  
Yeah. So we are layered. I mean, that's the one that I think is actually maybe we came to it first from the visual element. But that's just the idea that we're combining all of these elements together all these little parts in our toolkit, although they don't necessarily go together, they can all be layered anyway. And no, I think what we talked to them about was that the ACLU makes room for all of these disparate ideas and perspectives, and they can all just be exist together. And that we can be a team without all being the same. But the very last guiding principle was for the logo. And we said, we are together. I mean, that's the most important one, I think, we may be all different, but we're coming together for our collective good, and for the good of all. So that idea informed our decision to revisit one of the ACL use logos, from an earlier era. And before the redesign in the early 2000s. They had been using a logo where it was kind of these really fat, chunky letters, obviously, custom drawn, and they were all touching, ACLU all touching. And the counters are really small, was a little bit hard to read had kind of a 70s 80s little bit of silliness to it. So we love that idea. And we love the idea of bringing something back from the organization's history that also worked with this idea of togetherness and unity. Of course, ultimately, it was completely redesigned and redrawn, so to bring it into this The current day and really a little bit more legible to after some initial sketches of the ACLU logo, we turned to Tobias fair Jones, who designed the logo for us. There were a lot of back and forth about different widths and different thicknesses and different letter forms, but he is the true genius behind the particular logo itself.

Blake Howard  40:21  
Okay, so Martha and the open team have set Lady Liberty free from her box and their visual update, created a standalone word mark and created design principles that allow the new ACLU brand to flex as needed in terms of color, voice and graphic treatments. And this gets back to my opening question about designing a brand identity quote for the people. And what they've done is put some smart tools in the hands of the ACLU communications team, to give them room to adjust as needed. For example, they have two brand fonts in the system. GT America is used to represent a more activist voice signaling in Mass Communications when they are advocating for change or a grassroots movement. The font century, however, is used for their informational voice. This is all about the facts and sharing information, not their opinion. This is their legal and objective truth voice. They also have color to work with if they're celebrating a legal victory. While their color can reflect that. If they're sharing the truth about a sobering fact, well, then they can choose a color that matches that feeling. After some refinement, the original ACLU client team of 30 or so we're starting to feel pretty good about the change. So they're working on rolling it out internally. But first, they had to run it up the flagpole for their executive director to approve,

Unknown Speaker  41:33  
they took it to the executive director, Anthony Romero. And once he signed off on it, then we thought, Oh, now we're done. We're good to go. But that still wasn't the case. We had many, many more meetings to go. So we had webinar after webinar with they're like, These are the days before zoom meetings, were really, were really a big thing, when we did these huge zoom meetings with representatives from all of their 53 affiliates on the call, presenting the work to them and fielding their questions and their input and their feedback as well. And then we also did one really big in person meeting at the ACLU annual staff conference. That year, it was in Phoenix. So we went to Phoenix. And we were one of the main events on this schedule. So a lot of staff who handle communications at their affiliate offices attended our session, and we did a presentation for them. And then we had kind of a goodie bag of things for them to take home. Like with the new logo, they got a nice tote bag and everything this is gonna who's gonna protest when

Blake Howard  42:48  
you gotta throw the tote in. The rebrand is on the tote. How good does it look on a tote? So people are at the national staff conference, they get the tote where people excited about the change? Was it? Was it a shock for them? Was it too much were there? Or is it positive negative? What was the response?

Unknown Speaker  43:05  
So in addition to the tote bag, we had some other things in there for them to play with, we actually printed some magnets with different elements of the identity system. So different sayings and images and all different colors. And the logo, of course, and we did some exercises with them to ask them to use those literal tools in their toolkit to put together simple, like mini posters. And so it was kind of a design workshop and where they all got to try their hand at it themselves. And I think that really helped because they were excited. They were I think the general spirit was that they were so excited to have different tools available to them, to be able to use new colors to be able to use some different typefaces to know how to use them and when to use which they were feeling really empowered about that. But at the same time, you know, as you mentioned, there aren't very many trained designers on staff at the ACLU. So the national office at the time, they only had two designers, but at all of the other affiliates. There was only one of those at those 53 organizations. So most of them are pretty small offices, you know, their staff probably consisted of executive directors and lawyers. And, you know, so then it meant that the one communications person, in addition to writing the press releases, had to make the image to post on Twitter. And so a lot of them had grown to have a lot of experience because this was part of their job description, but they didn't feel really empowered. They didn't feel that they had all the skills they needed. And so they were a little worried that okay, now I've got all these tools but I'm not For sure if I'm going to be able to use them the right way. So that meeting was really helpful in, in showing them that actually, these things go together pretty easily. And the beauty of this system, I think, is that it's kind of hard to mess up. This is a real maximalist kind of identity system. So kind of anything goes. And as long as it's got some energy, and some color, and the ACLU logo on it, it's going to look like it belongs, and it'll do its job of communicating. So we really wanted something that would be hard to break. We were part of a lot of meetings with a lot of Gantt charts and an Excel spreadsheets about the timing and how it was all gonna work. Basically, the identity system launched with the logo with the replacement of the logo on the ACLU website, and on a few other key communications that they have. I think we did have some ads, there were some ads that we designed, and that got printed. But it wasn't a huge splash. And I don't think our intention was ever to make a huge splash because ultimately, the story here for us is not ACLU has a new logo, and everything looks clean and fresh, and, and new. That's not the story. The story is, this is a court case that we're working on. This is the petition that we need you to sign. This is the protest that, you know, we're going to be attending, and we hope you will too. That's the story. And we're just happened to be communicating it in a new way. So, you know, it might be news in the design world, but we didn't want it to be news in the in the wide world. It's just simply supporting the work that they do. So it was kind of a quiet rollout. Yeah. And it was a little bit slow to I'd say, the other thing we have to recognize is that there are 53 organizations, and they all have, you know, I mean, how many millions of business cards. And so we said, you know, keep using your old business cards, and then when it's time to reorder, order your new ones, you know, people will understand. It still says your name still has the ACLU on it. So it'll be fine. It's just a practical reality, particularly for a nonprofit organization like the ACLU, like your funds are better spent elsewhere.

Blake Howard  47:16  
You know, this whole story is a great example of a refresh being solved in a strategic and smart way, not just designed for design sake. But to me, this system is much more than just a logo. It's a set of tools in the hands of the ACLU team, to help them better communicate who they are in clear and compelling ways. And I would say it paid off in the first year after their launch, the ACLU saw a big increase in public attention and awareness, which turned into higher donations and a larger and more engaged digital audience than ever before. quantifiably for those like numbers, their email list grew by 340%, their total social media audience increased by 680%. And their annual website views surged by 360%. More than that they received online donations totaling 100 million, for a little more perspective on that impact in 2016, their revenue and support was $138 million. And in 2017, just a year later, it surged to almost $300 million 116% increase. It's been close to four years since this change launched and I was curious what Martha thinks of the brand as she sees it out in the world today.

Unknown Speaker  48:30  
I mean, I honestly think they've done a great job. And they've taken my identity system to places that we didn't necessarily anticipate. So they've since hired more designers, and they've had a lot of fun experimenting, and combining things in in in ways that we couldn't have predicted. And I will say that, of course, that when I see something, my first thought is, oh, that breaks, you know, rule number 12. They're not actually numbered, but you know, you look at it, and you say, oh, that breaks this rule. Oh, you know, they forgot to include red, they've got blue, and they've got yellow, and they've got green, but they don't have red, you know, they forgot about red or something like that. But in the end, I think for the most part, everything looks great. And as a whole, it all looks great. You know, and and you can see the huge variety of things that they make. And so it doesn't really matter so much. If a single Instagram post is a little bit off or isn't exactly the way I would have done it. I think the whole point of this system, particularly for the ACLU is that it shouldn't be just the way that I would have done it. It should be the way that the person who's making it wants to do it and what has meaning for them. And it's been really gratifying. You know, of course the ACLU has been really active in the last four years and it's been really gratifying to go out to protests or to see reporting in the news that that shows ACLU work. protest posters and so forth in the hands of real people who really care about these things, and who are so invested in the message behind that poster that they're holding up. And to think that we've not just empowered the ACLU and the designers of the ACLU to do their job. We've also empowered these everyday people to to share with the world what they think is important and where they stand. So it's been absolutely a great honor to see how our work has been used by others, and that it has meaning for people.

Blake Howard  50:33  
It's also worth noting after this work, the open team summarized all of their design thinking and strategy for the ACLU brand by creating a design handbook. It was written in everyday language, not the nerdy graphic designer speak. It was 178 pages long, and it's the exact size of a pocket constitution. Okay, that's a wrap for today's show. Thank you for listening. And special thanks to Martha King McGill for her time, and for giving us a behind the scenes look into this story. To see more visuals from today's episode, be sure to head on over to a change of brands calm. And of course, if you liked today's show, share it with a friend or leave us a review on Apple podcasts. It really does help. Just like our weekly review winner Ruth and Claire did with her review titled inside scoops. Thank you Ruth and be sure to DM us on Instagram or email me Blake at Matt Schick calm to collect your prize. Today's episode was edited by Matt Owen. Special thanks to Sarah Gail Hughes for our briefing. And Caitlin Landauer for today's artwork. I'm your host, Blake Howard, signing off

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