Content Guidelines for Samara
The Samara Centre required a cohesive inventory of versatile brand assets to ensure consistency across email, social media, and web content.
Services
About the Client
The Samara Centre for Democracy is a Toronto-based non-partisan charity focused on strengthening Canadian democracy through civic engagement. Their initiatives include the Humans of the House podcast, the bestselling book Tragedy in the Commons, and SAMbot, a machine learning tool that tracks toxic political discourse online.
The Challenge
How do we deliver content so that there is visual consistency across email, social media, and web?
While the Samara Centre had a strong brand foundation with established logos, colors, and typography, their team faced challenges in applying these elements consistently across their various content themes. The lack of a robust set of visual assets meant the team often felt like they were reinventing the wheel for each new project. This resulted in a fragmented appearance across their website, social media, and email campaigns, making it difficult to maintain a unified visual identity.
The Approach
To address these challenges, we began by assessing Samara’s existing visual identity to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement. This involved analyzing their branding elements across platforms to understand where inconsistencies arose. In addition, we examined their content workflow, focusing on how they developed, designed, and published content. This allowed us to see how content was informing design and how decisions were being made from a visual perspective. We identified elements that were highly effective and others that were less so, helping us determine where to streamline and where to expand the asset library.
The Solution
We focused on building a high-volume inventory of easy-to-use brand assets to enhance their visual identity. These included:
- Social Media Templates: Pre-designed templates and guidelines to ensure a consistent look across all social channels.
- Iconography: Custom icons aligned with key content pillars and themes.
- Condensed Color Palette: A simplified palette for easier application and visual consistency.
