#inequality! A topic well worth a day of blog action.

On this occasion of Blog Action Day on the theme of #inequality -- it seems like the perfect fit to feature the work we've recently done for one of our favorite clients -- Inter Pares. Their name means "Among Equals" and they are an organization that take inequality and it's impact on every aspect of social justice work very seriously.  But we'd rather talk about what equality looks like. In fact, equality has become Inter Pares' brand! 

Inter Pares is one of the reasons we love our work so much! Together we’ve been able to take the idea what we at Hello Cool World call ‘social branding’ to a whole new level. At it’s core, social branding embodies the idea of equality – a brand, a logo, an image and especially a tagline, should be a tool for collaboration, for telling stories together, not an empty 'brand promise' to simply sell us on business as usual. With Inter Pares, we are able to challenge ‘branding as usual’ and embrace the work that will transform the world.

We did a year long branding process for Inter Pares, doing a communications audit, conducting workshops with staff, surveying their counterparts and donors, and a large survey of the public in both English and French. As an organization that has been around since the 1070’s they needed an update to their image, and tools to tell their story. And theirs is story that needs to be told.

Inter Pares is an organization based in Ottawa. They have long-term relationships with their counterparts -- local and national activist organizations – in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Canada.Their staff is all paid equally, and instead of staffing offices overseas, they work in support of local groups. They believe, as they say on their new website in “solidarity, not charity as an approach to international cooperation.” Their programs largely focus on six global issues: food sovereignty, women's equality, peace and democracy, economic justice, health and migration.

The challenge we had was to compellingly – and quickly—convey their essence – to distill their 40 year history of working with courageous activists around important and often difficult issues into an image and tagline that will help them gain new supporters in a noisy non-profit climate where everyone is in need of donor dollars.

The new logo, has a hand-made feeling (something our market research told us was important). A calligraphic brush stroke implies the world, it’s blue green colours and gesture bring the north and south together, and their tagline ‘globalize equality’, ‘mondalisier l’égalité’, is the very core of what is at stake. In a world where globalization is causing inequality, poverty, violence and so many of the problems society faces, it’s time to globalize the root cure -- equality is the answer we are all seeking.

We’re really proud that we were able to contribute to the work that Inter Pares is doing. Based on the public’s survey feedback we came up with an illustration style that could be used for their website and other materials that has the same feeling as the logo. These illustrations are based on Inter Pares own photos, and are part of the new website Inter Pares just launched. We also did a display banner for them and thanks to a donor who paid for the ad space we did a full page ad for them in The Walrus magazine.

Our own relationship with Inter Pares goes beyond having them as a client. They were one of the first organizations to come on board to support The Corporation film (an impact production that Hello Cool World is the educational distributor for) when it was in development, and now, a decade after this launch they partnered with us on our crowd funding campaign to get the film free to 1000 schools. Inter Pares came on board as a community partner and hosted a screening of the film at the recent People’s Social Forum in August. We look forward to more! 

We encourage you to visit Inter Pares new website and to support the important work they do.