For this project we worked with Michael Watts to capture and share his top 10 lessons from his personal journey to becoming an inspirational leader
Inspiring towards leadership is our joint product to share this.
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Developing a brand
Okay, so your probably not surprised that we started here. Its what we do.
Background
Michael (who is also our founder) was very clear about the name he wanted to use. Ever since he studied his first leadership course he has aimed to be seen as an ‘inspirational leader‘. Its aspirational, but hey, that’s him and us all over!
And this shaped the name – inspiring towards leadership.
Inspiring towards leadership is grammatically incorrect – we’ve been told that a few times.
But, it’s a brand name.
Its active and picks up the other element of the project – Michael wants to inspire, encourage and help people become the leader that they want to follow (visit our See Them Rise project for more on this).
Logo
So, we took the name and created a brand and logo around it.
We designed a logo that was simple, clear and stood out in a crowded leadership marketplace. Here is our design:
We went for a circle to symbolise how leadership is something that is continuous. Its not something that you do once, its something that you have to keep doing. To keep refining. To keep learning. And a circle is a perfect shape for this.
We also went for a handwriting, brush style for the wording. We did this to symbolise the personal element behind the project. The 10 lessons are Michael’s lessons. So we didn’t want the style to feel formal or fixed, we wanted it to look and feel human.
Font
The font that we used on the logo – Selima – was used solely for the logo.
We decided to use two different fonts for the actual text in the lessons – Cabin Sketch for the headings and Open Sans Condensed Light for the text body.
Colour palette
We brought together three main colours, along with white and black, to create a colour palette that is vibrant, consistent and stands out:
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The product
Once we had the brand fixed, and Michael’s 10 lessons in writing, we started to think about what the end product would be.
How could we share this simply, clearly and so it engages in the audience?
And we decided to come up with a few ideas –
1/ postcards (see below)
2/ Instagram images
3/ images for Michael’s blog, LinkedIn article and Medium posts
4/ a downloadable document
5/ a separate web page (using Xtensio)
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Social media
To support the product we also created a hashtag that could be shared and used across different social media formats –
#ITLlessons
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Images
Here are a few images from this project: