The client
Women in Development of Greater Boston is an organization committed to educating and developing professionals through various programs, events, and volunteer opportunities. Since it’s beginning in 1980, this member organization, has grown to be one of the largest organizations for professional advancement in the state of Massachusetts.
The project
Opus Design of Boston was hired to rebrand Women in Development (WID) with a new logo design and website. WID wanted a logo the members could take pride in, use as a professional affiliation badge and share with other women. They wanted the look and feel to reflect the mentoring, coaching and community aspects of the organization. All the women in WID are bright, energetic, smart and modern. This was their logo when Opus met them.
Design challenge and approach:
The approach our design company takes in designing a logo, is first to do the research to learn who they are, and how they want to be perceived. Opus met with their entire board of about 20 members, to listen and learn about their brand aspirations. Armed with an understanding of their strengths and needs, we brought together several designers. The team was briefed on the client and they all created sketches and logos drawings. Through critiques we identified the concepts that had the most potential to develop further. Then we presented a focused group of highly-developed logos chosen by the creative director to express their brand identity. This collaboration between designers allows us to consider a larger variety of ideas. The presentation to WID included mark logos, type-based logos and both mark and type combined treatments.
WID chose a small steering committee to represent the organization’s voice in the process. We met with them on a weekly basis to ensure progress with the project. In the end, WID chose the mark with type logo. The final mark is a radiating symbol representing people coming together to learn, grown and expand their network and professional development. Since their old logo was green, using green in the new logo was a nice time to the past, but overall the updated logo has a new, vibrant, fresh, and modern feel.
Art Director, Ellery Curran, designed this logo. Throughout the process it was exciting to experience the group decision process and transformation of the logo along with their feedback. The clients are very happy with the logo and feel it represents who they are and where they are going. It is one of Opus’ most dramatic rebrands and it has won both a Silver Hermes award as well as a Merit award with Graphis.
