IUK/Catapult
Three brand guides for the simplification of the IUK/Catapult branding
The background
Innovate UK is the United Kingdom's innovation agency, which provides money and support to organisations to make new products and services. It is a non-departmental public body operating at arm's length from the Government as part of the UK Research and Innovation organisation.
A network of nine organisations was set up by Innovate UK to promote research and development and to exploit market opportunities, called Catapult centres. The centres operate as nine independent, private, not-for-profit businesses, brought together through collaboration and joint projects. As a whole, they are referred to as the Catapult network.
The brief
IUK approached us to help them simplify and create a set of design rules around how their Catapult logo should sit alongside the IUK logo, how it works alongside Catapult network, and general rules ensuring that as the Catapult network grows, everything is created in a cohesive and consistent design.
The challenge
Each Catapult has its own brand, font, colours and identity, however each Catapult logo has to be the same design to sit comfortably alongside other Catapult logos, just in a different colour, as well as alongside the IUK logo in some instances.
The process
Each Catapult also has their own needs for branding alongside IUK, so Ergo surveyed each one to understand what theirs were. This resulted in the decision to create three separate guides to cater for the different requirements of various Catapults, rather than one Masterbrand guide.
The result
The result was a streamlined, simplified set of rules that are easy to follow for each Catapult’s unique circumstances. Whether they were an existing Catapult or newly joined, everything was simple to follow, templated and streamlined.