BY Armin

Crumpling as Identity

Originally founded in 1968 as a small alcohol counseling agency, the Swanswell Charitable Trust has since grown into an organization with more than 100 employees across the English Midlands, with headquarters in Birmingham, and a handful of £millions in operation, that helps people with their drug and alcohol dependencies. With growth had come brand confusion as well, with many initiatives taking on different names and Swanswell worked with Brand Guardians to establish a new brand positioning and most importantly adopt Swanswell as the main name for everything. After that phase of the project, the identity design went to johnson banks, who got their crumple on.

When the trust approached us last year with their chosen, legacy name, we were a little unsure at first until we began to see that the “well” at the end of the word could be of use. Various typographic experiments followed, before the discovery that a piece of paper, crumpled at one end, could act as a suitable metaphor for someone’s life smoothing itself out.
— johnson banks Project Description

The six degrees of “crumple.”

The concept alone on this identity is remarkable, and the execution is visually engaging not just in the logo but in the full range of elements. It is also fairly easy to execute by Swanswell without having to engage a design firm for all their needs, and it seems like it could be scaleable and expandable for various years. The typeface used is Doric, which is a nice alternative to the ever British Gill Sans, and while it doesn’t look like much of a winner when you see it flat online, Doric looks quite nice crumpled.

Business cards come bound in a little pad, which are removed and crumpled individually.

A family of words and phrases to produce posters, ads or leaflets.

There are a few more applications at johnson banks’ and you are encouraged to go visit. This is a great system for a great organization.

\n\nOriginally founded in 1968 as a small alcohol counseling agency, the Swanswell Charitable Trust has since grown into an organization with more than 100 employees across the English Midlands, with headquarters in Birmingham, and a handful of £millions in operation, that helps people with their drug and alcohol dependencies. With growth had come brand confusion as well, with many initiatives taking on different names and Swanswell worked with Brand Guardians to establish a new brand positioning and most importantly adopt Swanswell as the main name for everything. After that phase of the project, the identity design went to johnson banks, who got their crumple on.

Many thanks to our ADV @ UnderConsideration Partners