ABOUT

This project was a rebranding exercise for Ygam, an award-winning British charity working to prevent children and young people from experiencing gaming and gambling harms through awareness raising, safeguarding, education and research.

There were several challenges that they faced when they came to Creative Clinic, which included:

• The current at the time (now previous) branding felt out-dated, ‘shouty’ and didn’t reflect the gaming side of the organisation’s work (when it was founded and the original branding was created, it’s sole focus was on gambling, but this evolved over years to cover gaming harms as well).

• Although at the time of launch, the original branding style and colour palette was considered somewhat disruptive within the gambling education and support sector, the brand had since lost its visual edge and distinctiveness. It was also not resonating with a younger audience more familiar with digital / gaming imagery.

• People often struggled to say the name correctly (usually as a Y-G-A-M acronym) rather than with the intended sound of ‘why-gam’).

As part of our process, we undertook several workshops with various stakeholders and developed a range of potential rebranding routes and campaign styles which were later tested with focus groups. The new brand identity that was created addressed the above points by introducing a more digital and gamified visual language, utilising a bold new colour palette that was unique within its sector, and styling the lettering to separate the Y from gam and dropping the all-caps lettering of previous.

The new logo represents three things:
1) The organisation’s core Youth emphasis;
2) It is reminiscent of a Y button on a game console controller;
3) It glows to reflect the ‘always-on’, compelling and potentially addictive nature of gambling and gaming, and the blurred lines that exist between them.

The rebrand was completed in time for a launch event at the Houses of Parliament in January 2023. Other work included creation of a brand book, interim website re-skin and publication of a strategy document, all of which heralds a new phase for the charity.

Daniel Bliss, Director of External Affairs at Ygam wrote to us with the following: “We have received nothing but positive feedback on how our brand now looks and feels. It has been incredibly well received by our staff, stakeholders and the teachers and professionals who use our resources. Full credit to your team for how you approached this difficult project and achieved such impressive results in the super tight time frame. It’s evident that your vision was spot on.”