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Fusion Arts
brand identity
Connecting the dots of Fusion Arts' brand
Background
Fusion Arts is a community arts charity based in east Oxford. They run a range of inclusive creative projects and events for the general public and various groups, with their goal being to make the arts accessible by connecting artists and communities.
When I started as the Digital Marketing, Communications and PR Manager at Fusion Arts in December 2020, they were embarking on an exciting and rapid period of expansion, upping the volume, calibre and reach of their projects, increasing their social media presence and growing their staff base.
Although they had a distinctive logo (comprised of magenta and black text on a yellow circular sun icon), they were lacking an accompanying set of branded templates that could be used to add consistency and identity to reports, callouts and social media flyers. During my time in the role, I produced various assets informed by a central brand style. These were created organically, as and when the need arose.
Brief
"We need a library of branded templates that we can use to streamline operations when it comes to making callouts, reports and flyers. These designs should reference our logo, core values and brand colours. Can you help?"
Process
As Fusion is involved in a diverse range of projects at a variety of levels involving a wide range of people (and embraces this fluidity within its messaging), I felt that it would be engaging and on-brand to create a variety of templates that share stylistic similarities and are recognisable as part of the same brand whilst not being identical.
Overall, in creating these assets, I carved out a distinct brand identity for Fusion and have connected (metaphorically and visually) different areas of the organisation's brand by linking each asset through shared design elements and references to the charity's logo.
Results
The artistic activity report slides received plenty of positive feedback from Fusion's Artistic Director and board of trustees, who were unanimously pleased to see Fusion's work depicted in an engaging, visually appealing and easily digestible manner. The slide templates have since become a mainstay in the quarterly updates, having been used to produce all of Fusion's artistic activity reports since their introduction in February 2021.
The social media graphic templates have helped to improve the communications team's efficiency in producing and circulating callouts. Several of the graphics I produced have been adapted to advertise different opportunities and events. Thanks, in part, to these engaging callouts, Fusion has been able to continue its growth, doubling both its core staff base and Instagram follower count over the past year and a half.
My next opportunity to create a brand asset emerged when Fusion decided to expand the team by recruiting an Exhibitions & Events Coordinator. To reach as many potential candidates as possible, I designed a flyer to circulate the callout on social media. The design again incorporated the yellow circle motif and used a round, friendly-looking sans-serif typeface, similar to the one used on the 95 vinyl design. I kept the design simple in order to convey the relevant information within the fast-paced, over saturated environment of social media. I created a few versions of the flyer (to avoid audience wear out), swapping in different suitable background images such as stills from past gigs and exhibitions.
The next asset I worked on was branding for Fusion's new temporary-use creative space, 95 Gloucester Green. For this, Fusion worked with graphic design and printing studio Bounce to produce several bright and attention-grabbing window vinyls that created buzz for the new space and gave it a visual identity. We decided to use the yellow sun with text inside elements of Fusion's logo. In contrast to the logo, a rounder, more squat typeface was used and the characters "95" were spelt using the negative space of the window inside the circle. The rationale behind these decisions was to give the space a familiar yet distinct identity from Fusion Arts. Yellow was used to attract attention and signify the desired cheerful, optimistic and innovative ethos of the space (which was launched as part of a post-lockdown project to restore vibrancy to Oxfordshire's highstreets) and the rounder san-serif typeface was used to convey a welcoming, contemporary feel.
borrowing from the logo colour scheme. These motifs were intended to convey the idea of
connectivity, inclusion, flexibility, working as a team/community and the fusion of
ideas, people, demographics etc. that Fusion speaks about in their messaging. Alongside project entries, the report slides included a lot of images - I felt it was crucial to let photos and illustrations speak loudly as visual testimonies of Fusion's important creative work.
I also incorporated the yellow semi-circle design and typeface into social media flyers that I produced to advertise an artist residency takeover on Fusion's Instagram page.
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The first template I created was for the organisation's artistic activity report, which is presented at their quarterly board meetings. I produced a set of slides which used a similar tall, thin san-serif typeface to the logo. I riffed on the logo's circle, making text boxes into yellow half-suns.
Fusion Arts' logo
Top left: the artistic activity report cover slide; top right, bottom L & R: example slides from the report
L-R: the finished branding
L-R: flyer variations
L-R: flyer variations
Top: prospectus cover page; middle & bottom L & R: selected pages from prospectus
I also incorporated pink and yellow semi-transparent overlapping circles,
After this, I then got to stretch my branding muscles to produce a prospectus for Fusion's temporary spaces. I expanded on the overlapping circle motifs used in the artistic activity report, again using them to represent connectivity, inclusivity and additionally, the idea that while the spaces are separately located across Oxford, they are interlinked by Fusions' ethos and the meaningful creative projects and events that they all facilitate.
The next asset I created was to advertise three 6 month placements at Fusion, made available through the government-funded Kickstart scheme. I used the overlapping circles and semi-circles from previous designs, and added some pink squiggly underlines (intended to imply a hand-drawn quality) to indicate the creativity and flexibility of the roles.
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Towards the end of this callout, the need arose for another recruitment advert, this time for someone to step into the role of Digital Marketing, Communications and PR Manager as I was leaving. As the previous graphic was being heavily used to publicise the three Kickstart roles, I produced a new graphic in order to avoid oversaturation and audience fatigue. For this asset, I used the same rounded typeface that I had used in the Exhibitions and Events Coordinator advert. I highlighted title text in white to make it stand out against the yellow background and suggest a hand-made quality as if highlighted with a highlighter pen. I also reincorporated the pink squiggly line and added magenta pink details to reference the pink features of the organisation's logo. As with the temporary spaces prospectus, the image had a round frame, however this time, I had been inspired by the morphing graphic on the new Fusion Arts website splash page and went for a more organic, asymmetrical circle to represent the flexibility, creativity, freedom, inclusivity of Fusion Arts and the job role. This design was also adapted for several other callouts including for a Workshop Facilitator position in partnership with the Museum of Oxford.
Left: animated social media advert; right: banner ad used for emails and job listing sites
Left: Instagram stories card for Marketing Manager callout; middle: Instagram tile for Marketing Manager callout; right: adapted Instagram callout card for Workshop Facilitator callout
Examples of recent flyers that have made use of my design template