A New Brand for The National Archives

In December 2018, we saw a brief asking for a review of the graphic identity of The National Archives. We had just successfully completed a brand for Social Work England and we saw another opportunity to work with a national institution that is hugely societally and culturally important and yet widely underappreciated. We won a competitive bidding process and a few weeks later we were on board, and making plenty of visits to the stunning mid-century building in Kew that houses the public-facing site for The National Archives. We spent time deep in the collection both onsite and online and started to understand how and why hugely evocative elements of our shared history were being collected, preserved and - most importantly - made available to everyone, for free. The more we learned, the more we saw the potential for The National Archives to transform its image - to become the cultural attraction it deserves to be, and in doing so be able to share the stories it holds with thousands more people every year. Our aim in a branding project is to get under the skin of an organisation to tease out its values and personality, and to work with key employees and the leadership team to develop the narrative and purpose that will underpin a meaningful brand. The results of an online survey to hundreds of employees, face to face meetings with department heads and engagement sessions with as many staff as possible helped us to distil the complex, multi-audience, globally-impactful mission of this organisation into a set of values and purposes, and these informed the creative decisions behind a visual identity which we believe to be powerful in its simplicity.