6 week Turnaround
For strategy, design and print production
A complete brand transformation in 6 weeks
Spark Inside is an innovative, award-winning charity that delivers coaching programmes in prisons, aiming to encourage rehabilitation, lower violence and reduce re-offending. The charity runs two programmes. Hero's Journey is an award-winning life coaching programme for young men aged 15 to 25 in prison, focused on reducing violence and re-offending. The Conversation is a systems coaching programme for large groups of prison staff and people in prison together, designed to improve relationships and drive positive cultural change. To date, Spark Inside has worked with over 1,000 individuals living and working in prisons across London and the South East.
For strategy, design and print production
Delivered to the client
Created within the deadline
Spark Inside needed a visual identity that clearly communicated the charity's values to a genuinely wide range of audiences. The main, public-facing brand had to work hard on two fronts at once, engaging grant-making bodies and philanthropists to fund the charity's work, while also holding credibility with policy makers in significant government positions. Hero's Journey needed to speak directly to young people in prison, many of whom had grown up in urban environments and challenging childhoods, without leaning on any of the stereotypical prison iconography the charity was keen to avoid. The Conversation had an even trickier brief, needing to appeal equally to prison staff and people in prison, two audiences with very different relationships to the same programme. All of this had to be delivered inside a tight six-week turnaround.
Brand strategy and design
We worked closely with Spark Inside's communications team throughout, building directly on research the charity had already done themselves. Spark Inside had run a focus group with young people in prison who'd completed their programmes, asking them how the charity's work should be marketed, and we made sure those insights sat at the heart of the brand's key design elements, rather than treating them as an afterthought. From there, we developed the main charity brand alongside two sub-brands for Hero's Journey and The Conversation, deliberately avoiding any of the stereotypical prison imagery the charity wanted to move away from.
Printed collateral suite
To support the rollout, we produced a 52-page brand guideline document in A4 landscape format, designed for easy in-office printing, with both print and interactive digital versions supplied. This sat alongside a full brand library covering rasterised and vector logos for the brand and both sub-brands, colour swatches, fonts, illustrations, infographics, raw and brand-treated photography, sample case study and report designs, and social icons. On the print side, we delivered three A3 posters for each programme, in cell and out-of-cell versions, three promotional A5 leaflets tailored to each programme's audience, appointment slips in DL format for both programmes, and a gold leaf overlaid certificate of completion for young people finishing Hero's Journey.
Spark Inside now has a consistent look and feel across all of their communication materials, something the charity had never had in a formalised way before. The charity reported improved credibility and strengthened relationships with both existing and new partners, along with growing awareness of the brand more broadly. The Hero's Journey certificates in particular stood out to the young people receiving them, noticeably different in quality to the other materials typically available in prisons.
Since launch, Spark Inside has used the new brand as a foundation to create further materials on their own, including a three-minute animation and a full website refresh, evidence that the brand system was built to be worked with rather than simply handed over. As Spark Inside put it themselves, this was the first time the charity had ever had professional brand guidelines and a full suite of marketing materials, and the process galvanised the HQ team, giving them a real sense of being brand ambassadors.
Spark Inside needed a brand that could speak convincingly to funders and policymakers on one side, and to young people in prison on the other, without either audience feeling like an afterthought, all inside a six-week deadline. Building the brand around research Spark Inside had already gathered directly from young people on their programmes is what made that possible, and it's part of why the growth since launch has been real rather than superficial, stronger relationships with existing and new partners, and rising awareness of a charity whose work depends on being trusted by people it hasn't met yet.
The efficiency of the project shows up less in the six-week turnaround itself and more in what it left behind, a proper brand library and guideline document meant Spark Inside could go on to produce new materials, including an animation and a website refresh, without needing to start from scratch or come back to us for every new piece. That library is the real asset on the books here, a ten-piece suite of guidelines and materials the charity now owns outright and can keep drawing on as their work continues.
If you're keen to learn more about this case study or have similar challenges, don't hesitate to reach out.
