Okanagan Humane Society Charity Rebrand

For my Employability Skills course, we were tasked with redesigning the branding for the Okanagan Humane Society, as well as producing a number of deliverables for them to use. I became the project manager for a group of four: Tina Raposo (myself), Jaymz Hamilton, Bryan Lonergan, and Zach Bradshaw. I delegated the different pieces of the project to each of us, and led meetings and discussions about our designs in order to give feedback and keep everything cohesive.

All together, we needed to create a new logo, a PSA video, social media graphics, traditional print ads, a non-traditional ad, a website design, and wearable marketing materials.

The Client's Current Branding

Founded in 1996, the Okanagan Humane Society is a 100% volunteer and donation driven charity that aims to solve pet overpopulation. They've been around quite a while, and so their branding is a bit dated. Their bright red brand colour wasn't as inviting as they would like, and the line-art style logo, though memorable, is a bit too oldschool and doesn't grab attentions as much as it could.

Because the OHS hasn't had the resources to get their branding sorted out, the look and feel is a bit inconsistent. Upon visiting their website, it's difficult to get a grasp on the compassionate nature of their work. Information on the site is very literal, and doesn't provide enough context to give their target market an understanding about who they are and what they do.

Rebranding

We started by collaborating on a new logo. We each designed our own logo version, and voted for the one we liked best. The finalist was Bryan's logo, as we all loved the cat and dog silhouette, but we still wanted to adjust colours. After much discussion, we settled on bright orange and sage green, as cheerful colours that could appeal to the varied market of the OHS.

We honed in on the different target markets for donators, adopters, and volunteers. Families frequently adopt, young women tend to volunteer, and donators are often older people.

Teamwork

As the project manager, I assigned the different deliverables to each of us. Zach had social media graphics, Jaymz had a PSA video, Bryan had mockups for wearables and some ads. Everyone's collateral has a clean, professional look, which made it so that all the pieces looked cohesive together.

We decided that it would be worth focusing on the 25 year anniversary of the Okanagan Humane Society, as it made for a catchy and relevant topic to advertise. In addition to that, we made sure to have some mention of the work that they do, helping animals in need, to remind people of the need for volunteers and donations.

Okanagan Humane Society branded stickers, social media, and apparel.

My Deliverables

I took care of the two traditional print advertisements, deciding on a bus ad and a newspaper ad that promotes the Okanagan Humane Society's 25 years of operation.

Bus stop advertisement for Okangan Humane Society.

Newspaper advertisement for Okangan Humane Society.

My main task was to redesign the Okanagan Humane Society's website, aiming to make it more user-friendly and modern. Currently, their site is pretty hard to navigate to get information you want quickly, and there are even some helpful pages and pieces of information that are nearly impossible to find without doing some digging. The blocks of the site are laid out inconsistently, which doesn't allow for a user's eyes to easily flow through the pages.

There's a lot of helpful information on their website pertaining to several subjects including volunteer instructions, cat foster instructions, their assistance program and more that I wanted to include as proper pages. I tried to keep layouts fairly clean, with plenty of white space to offset the large amount of information and the bright pops of colour.

Okanagan Humane Society website redesign screen shots.

Finally, I also provided the voice over for this video created by one of my team members, Jaymz! The video promotes keeping your cats indoors, as outdoor cats are often the reason for a lot of the issues the OHS deals with, like stray cats and feral cat colonies.

The Final Product

Here is a collection of the different deliverables we produced as a team for the Okanagan Humane Society. Currently, their website and social media are quite minimal. but this package would allow for a strong brand redesign for the organization, should they decide to implement it.