All work

PSI rebrand

Identity, voice and brand system

A rebrand rolled out across 55 countries, and individual giving that nearly doubled.

Client: Population Services International
Sector: Global health
Scope: Rebrand, anniversary identity, website, reports
My role: Head of Design
Partners: Design Army (rebrand)
Fifty & Fifty (website)

1-minute version

The challenge: A $650M organization with 1,500 staff in 55 countries needed a brand that reflected its new strategic plan and worked in every office. Its 50th anniversary was the moment to launch it.
What I did: I led the rebrand with PSI’s CEO and Director of Communications, in partnership with Design Army: a new visual and verbal identity, the 50 Forward anniversary identity, and the rollout across web and print.
The result: Individual giving nearly doubled after the rebrand, and new multimillion-dollar donors came in. The new brand stayed in use well beyond the anniversary year.
Scale: $650M organization, 1,500 staff, 55 countries.

Challenge

The brand had to carry PSI’s new strategic plan to donors, partners and staff, and work in every one of its offices.

Insight

PSI’s strength is its range: interventions from vaccines and bed nets to private markets, and partners from individuals to governments, across dozens of cultures. The brand made that rich mix its pattern, many pieces forming one fabric.

Solution

With Design Army, we built a new visual and verbal identity and the 50 Forward anniversary identity: a pattern of colored tiles, strong photography, clear type and a new voice. We kept the logo and brightened its colors, so offices in 55 countries didn’t have to repaint signs and vehicles. We rolled it out across the website, reports and print.

Results

Individual giving nearly doubled after the rebrand, and new multimillion-dollar donors came in. Engagement and morale lifted across the organization, and the brand stayed in use long after the anniversary year.

The 50th-anniversary film.

The system

One brand system across the guidelines, the identity, the website, reports and page layouts. Select any image to see it full screen.

Guidelines. The 2021 brand guidelines: the logo, the triangle overlays and the tile pattern.

PSI website section on practice areas, with photos framed in colored tiles — **Website.** Practice areas, with photos framed by the tiles.

PSI website page with a photo grid and latest updates — **Website.** Stories and the latest updates.

Identity. The PSI logo, the 50th-anniversary mark and the tile pattern.

A page of the PSI guidelines on square-format photography: a woman lifting a blue mosquito net, with notes on the triangle overlay — **Photography.** How a photograph meets the triangle: cropped square, rich in color, never over the subject.

Report spreads with photos, colored blocks and a world map — **Reports.** Report spreads: photography, tiles, data and maps.

A set of page layouts with teal blocks and tile patterns — **Layouts.** Page layouts built on one grid, with color blocks and the pattern.

Printed pages with large headlines and photos — **Print.** Editorial pages that pair bold headlines with photography.

What I’d add today

I’d turn the anniversary film into a series of short vertical films, each built on one local story, that offices could subtitle and share in their own languages.

“Thank you for all the amazing work that made us look credible, professional and an organisation with whom people want to partner.”
Malcolm Quigley, Director, Strategic Partnerships, Population Services International