Helping a brand thrive

Thrive’s story is one of a grassroots organization that grew to be a staunch supporter and advocate for local economic development, community initiatives, and social enterprises. However, changes and growth within the organization over the years asked that it take a fresh look at how well the brand is serving it. 

GOOD Company was asked to audit the brand and develop guidelines to help Thrive apply the brand consistently and correctly.

And while we were familiar with the core of Thrive’s brand by way of working on their website, we did not create the logo or many of the elements being used in the brand. So, the first part of this project involved checking in with Thrive to review present strategic goals, the organization’s mission and values, then evaluate whether the branded elements being used aligned with them.

The second part of what we needed to do was to make sure that—of the elements that were a fit— everything worked well together.

In fact, as we performed an initial audit, we found that over the years, Thrive’s brand was visually interpreted in a few ways. But, either the branded elements were not working well with each other, they didn’t represent the essence of Thrive in its present state, or, they were not being used consistently by staff at Thrive.

Working collaboratively with Thrive, we came to some decisions about what should stay, what should go, and what we could add to tie it all together. For example, Thrive had this lovely illustration that didn’t seem to blend with a later iteration of the brand’s colour palette, as pictured below.