The people we support and their struggle to stand up for their human rights is always our focus. However, from time to time we need to reflect on how we communicate our work to existing and new audiences, and, in an increasingly digital world, a crucially important part of this is our visual identity.
We have had the opportunity to speak with a number of supporters about our visual identity over the past year, and it has been incredibly helpful to have your input. Over the past couple of months, we have been working closely with one of our volunteers to develop a new visual identity and we hope to unveil this at our 60th Anniversary event in the autumn and online shortly thereafter.
A rebrand is quite a challenge with lots of factors to try and get right. Before considering the visual identity, we needed to consider if the name of the charity was helping to communicate the work that we do. This is an issue we have wrestled with for some time, and whilst some people find the name somewhat confusing, we think there is value in retaining the name Prisoners of Conscience but did conclude that this could be strengthened by adding a punchy strapline that helps to better articulate our work to new audiences.
And whilst we knew we needed to refresh our visual identity, we were also keenly aware that we have existing audiences that we don’t wish to alienate by developing something too radical. To help address this, we have retained a colour palette that will be very familiar to existing supporters.
As well as being visually appealing, we were however very clear that the new identity had to be confident, and importantly, to better reflect the bravery and resilience of the people with whom we work. For this reason, we have decided to stop using the image of the kneeling man, as we felt that this was too submissive, and also doesn’t reflect that fact that 30%* of the people we support are women.
So, as well as looking back and reflecting on how we reached our 60th Anniversary year, it’s also a great opportunity to look forwards with a newly invigorated identity, which we can’t wait to share with you later this year.
*Of 112 individual grantees in the last year, 79 were men, 33 were women.
