The Citizens Foundation — Tom Etherington // Graphic & Brand Designer

The Citizens Foundation
// Your Priorities

In the new digital age does democracy require
a re-think?

With Social media now playing such an integral role in democracy The Citizens Foundation developed a new approach. An award-winning non-profit organisation developed open source tools to promote online, democratic debate.

Their first platform, Your priorities has been used in over 20 countries.

"We were delighted that Tom offered to carry out a rebrand as a donation. We are really happy with the clean and modern look of our new visual identity that will help us boost the brand of our
non-profit and connect even more citizens with their governments over the internet."

Using a system that resembles a university debate, you have 2 sides of an argument, users add points for or against the argument of which can be voted up or down. They cannot directly comment on a point, only make standalone counter points with no direct connection to the initial statement making trolling almost impossible and eliminating opportunities for a debate to turn into a personal argument.

As an interesting and new approach to looking at online discussions I reached out to the
CEO and President of The Citizens Foundation Robert Bjarnason so see if I could help in providing my services on a pro bono basis.

Much like their innovative platform I set out to reimagine their brand strategy; and with an already strong ’WHY’ in their golden circle I created a new brand mark which is simple, powerful and actionable. It unites the organisation internally and acts as a strong symbol or direction and purpose.

As Your Priorities is the platform for which The Citizens Foundation ran we felt a link to the two logos was important, so the same font set was used throughout as well as keeping a certain consistency with the Heading and strapline placements and size.

Our thought process led to ways of illustrating ‘discussion’ and ‘debate’ so elements such as speech marks, typing awareness indicators and up / down arrows were all viable options of which to best illustrate their platform.

What did The Citizens Foundation think?

"We were delighted that Tom offered to carry out a rebrand as a donation. While striving to be sustainable we're not there yet and frankly would not at this time have the funds to hire a high-end graphics specialist like Tom. We are really happy with the clean and modern look of our new visual identity that will help us boost the brand of our non-profit and connect even more citizens with their governments over the internet."

Robert Bjarnason
CEO and President of The Citizens Foundation

The Citizens Foundation // Your Priorities

In the new digital age does democracy require a re-think?

With Social media now playing such an integral role in democracy The Citizens Foundation developed a new approach. An award-winning non-profit organisation developed open source tools to promote online, democratic debate. Their first platform, Your priorities has been used in over 20 countries.

As an interesting and new approach to looking at online discussions I reached out to the CEO and President of The Citizens Foundation Robert Bjarnason so see if I could help in providing my services on a pro bono basis.