The Lowy Institute is Australia’s largest independent think tank, and an internationally-recognised, globally-respected institution. Based in Sydney, it covers both domestic and international topics and hosts events and discussions featuring some of the world’s most prolific figures and leaders.

The brand however, wasn’t reflecting this position appropriately, nor was there a definitive brand language to properly support the whole-of-brand communications. The Lowy Institute therefore asked Scribble & Think to address this.

We first developed our understanding of the core brand foundation and higher purpose, ‘be part of change’, looking to instil a sense of pride and belonging in staff and audiences through engaging and informing. We also needed to take into consideration effective media visibility during live events, and how the brand could be adapted for use on both digital and print collateral, as well as sub-brand identities.

This was done by facilitating a strategic planning Q&A session with the Executive Director and other key stakeholders to identify the needs and ambitions as an organisation, which would in turn influence the new, elevated brand identity.

Using the key findings from the Q&A session, we mapped out several different concept directions that demonstrated how a brand persona would be considered across different platforms including stationery, social media, events and publications, whilst still maintaining a unified and recogniseable identity. Once a final concept was agreed upon, we crafted the master logo to ensure it had the subtle, yet authoritative character that the Lowy Institute embodied.

Following the masterbrand logo, we developed the core stationery assets then the logos for the sub-brands, The Informer and Lowy Lecture Series, as well as multiple banners and backdrops for media event use. As the Lowy Institute had previously struggled with inconsistencies with the usage of their brand assets, it was essential that we also developed a brand user guide that covered the masterbrand and sub logos, colours and fonts to outline the rules and guidelines of the appropriate usage for these assets to ensure the correct representation of the brand in the long-term.

A full case study will be available soon, stay tuned.

Visit the Lowy Institute site.