Baw Baw Shire Council

The Baw Baw Shire Council located only 90km from Melbourne attracts locals and tourists alike for their highly desirable lifestyle, close proximity to diverse natural landscapes including beautiful beaches and rugged snow-capped mountains and their rich art and cultural offerings. The Baw Baw Shire Council generally has a little bit of everything for everyone.

In mid-2018 Seen was approached by Baw Baw Shire Council to develop a brand guideline that directs the council’s brand system and visual language to easily and effectively communicate the council’s brand. Baw Baw Shire Council’s visual identity had little to no direction, resulting in an inconsistent visual appearance that didn’t reflect the council’s brand, culture and professionalism.

Our job was to find a way to capture and reflect the unique personality of the Baw Baw Shire Council along with its diversity, nature and opportunities in a “one look, one feel”, cohesive brand identity and visual style, whilst keeping the existing council brandmark. It was essential for the identity to be simple enough to work with partner organisation and create co-branding guidelines that allow both brands to communicate their identity without one overpowering the other.

After implementing thorough market research, we explored ways to communicate the many different facets of the Baw Baw Shire Council as a whole and developed a geometric shape linking the major towns in the shire, which became a key graphic device of the council’s visual identity.

To better represent the new brand system, the council brand and their various service categories have been fundamentally reinvigorated using a distinct colour palette. The original shape of the council’s brandmark was kept and was modernised by using a single colour that is tailored to each specific service category. To maintain consistency and structure across all visual brand touchpoints, a lock-up device was created that sees the logo in a coloured or white square box, allowing the brandmark to be presented clear and visible no matter the background. The new range of icons are contemporary, eye-catching and memorable featuring simple lines that sit in a distinctive circle shape, complemented by their respective service category colour. Baw Baw Shire Council’s new visual identity is brought to life through brochures, stationery assets, banners and powerpoint and social media templates capturing the spirit of the local area.

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