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Our Acting Chief Executive and Director of Impact, Sophie Bartlett, explains why we have updated our branding.
I’m delighted to share with you that as of today, we have launched Yes Futures’ new brand.
To empower every young person to discover their personal potential, it’s really important that our logo and visual appearance clearly reflect what we do and what we stand for.
Yes Futures has drastically evolved since being founded in 2012. We have gone from a volunteer-run organisation, working with just 10 secondary school students in our first cohort, to a team of 12 employees, supported by over 100 volunteers working with 450 students last year. We have launched our Finding Futures primary schools programme, adapted our programmes to the pandemic, and launched our 2025 strategy, with the aim of working with more young people than ever before. As our charity enters a new stage of growth, we felt that the time was right for our brand to evolve too.
How we went about the rebrand
Last year, we began looking at the language we use to talk about Yes Futures, our programmes and our young people – the verbal expression of our brand. We spoke with different stakeholders; our students, staff, volunteers, funders, corporate partners, to understand how they would describe Yes Futures and our work. We used this feedback to shape our new ‘why’, ‘how’ and ‘what’, our core purpose.
Why: Because positive futures begin with self belief.
How: Our positive IMPACT behaviours underpin the Yes Futures brand (Inclusivity, Motivation, Professionalism, Ambition, Collaboration, Trust).
What: We empower young people to believe in themselves and discover their personal potential.
We recognised that the look and feel of our brand also needed updating, in line with this. As a young person-centred charity, it was key to us that young people were really involved in the process. We worked with a designer and using the feedback from the first stage of the rebranding, came up with three different design options. We ran focus groups with our staff, Trustees, volunteers and some of the young people on our programmes, to gather their feedback. The design we chose was a clear favourite across all groups, and with the feedback from our community, we tweaked the design to really reflect the Yes Futures we all know and care about.
Why did we choose our new design?
The shape and font of the logo is strong and confident, with equal emphasis given to “Yes” and “Futures”. The “Y” shape connecting the two words links to the idea of connecting pathways and the fulfilling journey that we take young people on through our programmes. “Futures” points up to the sky which aligns with our mission; empowering young people to reach their personal potential.
The branding is modern, fresh, and expressive, while still being simple, inclusive and dyslexic-friendly.
The colour scheme is designed to be calm and nurturing, to highlight our role in young people’s growth and to reflect the outdoor elements of our programmes.
It was also important to us that we had a different colour scheme for our Finding Futures and our Rising Futures programmes, to highlight the differences between each programme and to tailor our approach for each age group.
What next for Yes Futures?
While our brand may have changed, what we stand for hasn’t. Yes Futures remains committed to creating a world where all young people are empowered to believe in themselves and discover their personal potential. We hope that our new look will boost our ability to do just that, by spreading awareness of our work to new schools, teachers, and the young people that desperately need our support.
Thank you to everybody that has supported us on this journey and been a part of developing our new look – we’re so excited to finally be sharing it with all of you!
Do you have questions about our brand refresh? Visit our FAQs page, or get in touch with our Communications Team at info@yesfutures.org.