This year is SAVE’s 50th anniversary and, as a first step in a whole year of celebrations, we’ve introduced a new website and a new look to give us a strong platform to inspire new audiences.
We asked Nicky Place from Yorkshire-based design agency Studio.Build to explain the work behind the new look.
It’s been an honour and a joy for us work with SAVE Britain’s Heritage to refresh their look in time for their 50th anniversary, and our two teams worked extremely closely to articulate what SAVE does in a way that speaks to the future, not the past. Primarily, we needed to help them reach and inspire a new generation of supporters, but it was also really important to create a hard-working toolkit that the team can deploy in all the places SAVE needs to be – whether that’s online, in print, on social media.
An obvious starting point was reworking the SAVE logo, but it was actually one of the last major elements to come together, as we approached the design with the entire look (colours, shapes, fonts) in mind and then worked backwards to create the logo with many of these elements incorporated.
A key part of the logo is the icon which sits to the left of ‘SAVE Britain’s Heritage’ and which visually summarises SAVE’s work – namely, campaigning to save buildings. Inspired by the universal bookmark symbol, the simple addition of a block implies an exclamation mark (urgency) while adding a dot in the negative space of the two alludes to buildings. This icon can be used alone or broken into its component parts (the flag, the block and the dot) and used as bold graphic shapes and patterns. The three simple elements are the foundation for the new look, and you can see them used throughout the new website and on other campaign materials.
An equally important part of the new look is the custom typeface which uses the 45° angles seen in the icon. This is a very deliberate detail to create a visual thread through the new look and makes everything, from the website to print to social media, immediately obvious as a communication from SAVE Britain’s Heritage.
Colour is also a big part of what makes a brand instantly recognisable. We agreed early on that the new SAVE palette shouldn’t lean too obviously into what we think of as “heritage” colours, but towards punchy, action ones. Print vs digital was a huge factor in colour choices too, with bright colours reproducing well on screen, and muted colours working well for printed publications. The result is a trio of colour sets, with the strong colours of the primary palette (crisp green, white and black) doing the heavy lifting on the front line, while the the more muted colours work quietly at the back.
Finally, a tagline was introduced to summarise the work that SAVE does: New Life For Remarkable Buildings. As campaigners for buildings of all types and ages, listed and unlisted, this acknowledges that a building can be remarkable whatever its size or style, and increasingly for its story as much as its architecture. It also puts reuse (rather than simply rescue or renovation) at the forefront of SAVE’s work.
We are massively proud of what we've done together with the SAVE team – and with web designers Hungry Sandwich Club – to bring it alive in the fantastic new website.
Nicky Place is business director of Studio.Build.
