Style Guide

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Suze

When I started working for HAVEN, they had a variety of printed materials they were using throughout the organization, but many of them didn’t match. They were made by different people in the different programs, without the use of a style guide.

My position hadn’t existed prior to my hiring, so the focus of others in the department had been more on fundraising than making sure the printed pieces matched (such is the norm in nonprofits). Within my first week I realized that HAVEN needed a style guide that outlined what should and shouldn’t be utilized in print and online design. I found a very outdated version from 2009 and used that as my jumping off point. I come up with a color palette, created templates for handouts, and crafted boilerplate statements.

Click here for the PDF of the style guide (it’s 14 pages and may take a few seconds to load).

Famous Hairs

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Suze

I found this image by Portuguese graphic designer Patrícia Póvoa and immediately fell in love.

She has quite a few more and they’re all fantastic.

Dig in Your Heels logo

Posted on January 26, 2013 by Suze

I created a logo for a special project at HAVEN called Dig in Your Heels. The project is a component of their capital campaign, open to 100 high-level female donors. These women would get the opportunity to have a shoe showcased in a special display (photo of design below).

The committee group found a stock image they liked and asked for something simple to be created. This is what they asked for:

Based on the knowledge of the donors for the project, I felt this image wasn’t right. It was too cartoony, too juvenile, and not high-end enough. I created a different image instead. This was the resulting logo:

This logo was chosen for the project, blowing the original out of the water. This image is a sample of what the logo and the donor wall will look like:

The font used was Halo Handletter. Purple was used because it is the color symbolizing domestic violence. The crack symbolizes digging in your heel, a play off the tagline in the logo.