Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre rebrand

Client: Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre
www.woodbrooke.org.uk

Rebranding Woodbrooke, the Quaker Study Centre

The only reason we knew that Woodbrooke was even looking for an agency to rebrand and redesign their website was because an existing client of ours alerted us to the fact (which in itself was a really nice compliment for the work we’ve done with them). So we pitched for the job, and were extremely pleased to have won. Woodbrooke have been an absolutely delightful organisation to work for.

We began with the branding – in total, we produced eight very different designs for them to choose from. The design they finally chose was a radical departure from their existing brand (a silhouette of a tree reflected in a lake), and is the sort of design that allows different people to draw different meanings from (which we really like). The meanings we saw in the design were as follows: We designed it to be a very simple brand, encompassing Woodbrooke’s three main areas of expertise (meetings and conferences, accommodation and courses). But it also speaks of countryside, calm and tranquillity.

We saw the blue at the centre as representing both the lake in the Woodbrooke grounds, but also the safe and peaceful B&B offering, surrounded by the unique Woodbrooke natural environment (and their grounds are truly amazing). The green – we saw as the training, speaking of growth, and the dark blue – as the more corporate conference offering. Words like ‘encompassing’, ‘embracing’ and ‘still centre’ sprang to mind.

The circles are deliberately not perfect circles, as they emphasise the warm and very human style of the service that Woodbrooke provides. They also reference the abundance of nature at Woodbrooke. Finally, we could also see a very simple tree-ring representation in the brand, speaking of growth, sustainability and longevity.

Once the brand had been finalised, we started work on the Woodbrooke website design and build.