Our Freedom: Then and Now

A brand can look brilliant in a presentation. The real test is what happens when it leaves the studio and gets handed over to the people who actually need to use it.

That might be an in-house marketing team, a project manager, a venue, a partner organisation or a volunteer. They’ll all have different levels of experience, different pressures on their time and often no access to a designer.

This was especially important for Our Freedom: Then and Now, a UK-wide programme marking 80 years since the end of the Second World War. The identity needed to connect activity across 60 arts centres and libraries, while giving each organisation the freedom to tell its own local stories. Some had dedicated marketing teams, while others were much smaller or volunteer-led.

So the challenge was bigger than creating something distinctive. It had to be simple enough to pick up, flexible enough to work across very different organisations and strong enough to still feel connected nationally.

Keep the system simple

More choice doesn’t always make a brand more flexible, sometimes it just makes it harder to use.

A clear palette, accessible typography and a small number of layouts can be much more useful than a huge set of options. The aim is to give people enough freedom to create what they need without making them second guess every decision.

Design for real life

Brand presentations tend to show everything at its best. Real life is usually a bit messier.

There are long event titles, different shaped images, partner logos, lots of copy and formats you didn’t necessarily imagine at the beginning.

Testing an identity against those things early on helps make sure the system genuinely works when it gets out into the world.

Make the toolkit useful

A toolkit guide should help people, not overwhelm them.

Clear examples, simple explanations and practical templates can make a huge difference, particularly for people who aren’t designers. The best guides explain the basic principles well enough that someone can make a sensible decision when they come across something that isn’t covered exactly.

For a programme like Our Freedom, that meant making sure people could confidently create their own materials while still feeling part of the same wider identity.

Know when to bring the designer back in

Just because you have a toolkit and templates doesn’t mean everything needs to be done in house.

There will always be bigger or more important pieces where it makes sense to bring a designer back in, whether that’s a campaign, a publication or something like an impact report. Those projects usually need more refinement and more attention to detail than a template can reasonably provide.

For us the best handovers aren’t about disappearing completely. They’re about giving teams the confidence to handle the everyday work themselves, while still being there when something needs that extra level of craft.

Leave some room

Consistency matters, but that doesn’t mean everything has to look identical.

The strongest systems will have recognisable visual principles that hold everything together, while leaving enough room for different audiences, messages and local stories.

Ultimately good systems make everyday use easier, but the best brands are designed to last, adapt and keep doing their job long after the initial handover.

What happens after the handover?