The story behind our rebrand
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The story behind our rebrand

Dama Sathianathan
Written by
Dama Sathianathan
Posted on
November 23, 2017
The rebrand was all about an organisation that has grown from small beginnings into something that operates confidently, knowing why it exists and how it goes about its business.

One of the inevitable side effects of a growing organisation is an inconsistency about how we talk about ourselves in different mediums and contexts to our many different audiences. So, James Weiner, a long time BGV mentor, kicked off a process to draw out our stories and really nail down who we are, how we operate and what our aspirations for the future look like. He talked to the BGV team, our founders and funders, and in doing so built up a picture of what really makes us tick – what’s the purpose that brings us together, what’s the change we want to see and how do we go about making that happen. Working with the BGV team he helped us to reframe our mission and build up a set of core values which we’ve articulated in our principles.We used our principles to help inform our new brand framework.

We wanted to create a brand personality that continues to be strong and personal. We wanted our visual identity to be flexible to use across different mediums, and meaningful to the different audiences we speak to. So we’ve focused on a strong use of colour with a modern and simple font - Montserrat. We were torn between BGV or Bethnal Green Ventures, so we’re keeping them both – BGV / Bethnal Green Ventures – and we’ve made a visual asset out of the forward slash. There was a little trepidation with losing the very local aspect of our brand, but as we continue to grow and expand our reach we felt that BGV can stand to lose the safety of its location placard (quite literally), as we look to build a global tech for good community.

The results from all these exercises allowed us to create a brand that captures what differentiates Bethnal Green Ventures from other investors and develop a brand personality that continues to be strong.

Challenging at times to find common consensus on the way we talk about ourselves, it’s been a fun experience to sift through documents of the past, talk to the BGV team and others individually and hear the full picture of BGV’s origin story. What became clear was our common ambition for what we wanted BGV to be – a global community of tech for good ventures significantly changing the world for the better. And with our new look, came a new website. [gallery columns="2" link="none" size="large" ids="https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/wpmedia.outlandish.com/bgv/app/uploads/2017/11/22140611/Screen-Shot-2017-11-09-at-19.09.30.png|Out with the old!,https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/wpmedia.outlandish.com/bgv/app/uploads/2017/11/22140724/Screen-Shot-2017-11-21-at-16.27.42.png|In with the new!"]We worked with the good people of Outlandish and true to our principles and culture, our journey has only just begun. We will continue to work on our website to give you an even better user experience. Hopefully, our new look does justice to our vision, so please do let us know what you think.