Brand Style Guide Development

We need a style guide that includes specific colors, fonts, and other graphic design elements in formats we can use in print, digital, and in-person settings. We're looking for a volunteer who's excited about our mission and has experience with brand and voice. This is a highly visible project that will impact us for a long time! This style guide may also include the following:

-Rules and guidelines for staff and board members to maintain brand consistency
-Tone and voice guidelines and examples
-Formatting examples
-Grammar, spelling, and punctuation preferences
-Instructions for utilizing the brand style guide based on communications channel or stakeholder
-The value of a consistent brand and voice, connecting back to our Mission/Vision/Values Statement

reDiscover has expanded rapidly over the past three years, including in-school teaching, new public facing facilities, new geographic reach around Los Angeles, expanded community programs, and increased online engagement. As an arts organization, we have multiple staff members with graphic design skills who have developed an ad hoc style guide. We need to consolidate existing work and examine our current operations and goals to create an official style guide that can be used consistently across the organization.

After operating a community arts center in Venice for 15 years, this winter we are opening a second location in Mid City, around 10 miles away. This is a great opportunity to apply our refined/revised branding as we create signage, fit out a 2,400 sf public youth makerspace, create collateral materials specific to the new location, etc. Our Venice location is also due for a facade overhaul. We seek to provide a high-quality, consistent public presentation at both locations, as well as our pop-up locations, school programs, and community outreach.

We'll share our branding goals and our target audiences. Our team will also come prepared with examples of brands we like. We'll share some of our past marketing materials. During the interview process, we'll ask to see your portfolio and examples of your graphic designs.We've collected a few brands we admire from peer organizations that give a sense of what we're looking for. The key staff members currently involved with graphic design and branding are available throughout the project to work with you to describe our past and current style elements and contribute to the project to create a new style guide. Both the Executive Director and selected board members with design, branding, and marketing experience will be actively involved as needed to connect your work to reDiscover's aesthetic, educational philosophy, and organizational goals.

We hope that this style guide will serve us for 3-5 years and be applicable to social media, video production, collateral materials in educational programs, collateral materials for marketing, signage, interior decoration, and camp t-shirts. We intend to implement this style guide immediately in the buildout of the Mid City reDiscover Center and associated collateral materials and to overhaul our school services handouts, website (scheduled to be rebuilt in 2024), and Venice facade (due for upgrades in 2024).