At P&G, we are continuously working to transform our community into a thriving, vibrant place to live. We love working with advocates who have a passion for growing and supporting a community that welcomes all people. That’s why we were thrilled when the Immigrant and Refugee Resource Collaborative reached out to us last fall.
The IRRC is a platform for stakeholders to come together to problem-solve and partner in pursuit of a stronger and more welcoming community. The organization provides support for immigrants and refugees with service-providing agencies. The IRRC nurtures a forum where New Americans are celebrated and believed to be critical to Mid-Michigan’s economy and culture.
When we originally met with the IRRC, the team expressed their need for a polished version of their current logo for functionality purposes, eliminating worry of pixelated images, making the text legible, etc. But we saw this as an opportunity to create a new identity for the group that was reflective of the world we live in today.
P&G recognized that this group needed a logo that depicted the struggles immigrants and refugees face, the stories they bring to the community, the passion they have for preserving culture and the love that the IRRC team puts into every effort to welcome New Americans to the Mid-Michigan region.
A new logo would reveal the IRRC’s evolved identity to the community, it would invite stakeholders to get to know the IRRC and immigrants and refugees to trust in the established group. When we presented the proposed rebrand to the IRRC team, they were in complete agreeance. That’s when we dove into the sometimes difficult, but necessary conversations about what the IRRC stands for and how we could portray that through a new logo.
The recently revealed logo is the result of several months of in-depth discussion, research and third-party feedback. The IRRC collectively settled on an elegant wordmark featuring a font that emphasizes the importance of easy-to-read English characters, while balancing a script font with subtle brush stroke textures to add a human element.
Complementing the word mark is a graphic that combines a Venn diagram – a diagram that celebrates the balance between similarities and differences – and an organic overlap of a lotus flower, which created a leaf shape in the center. The lotus flower is symbolic of peace, and while rooted in the mud, its flowers blossom above the murky water.
The color palette appeared as the IRRC team chose keywords: cultivating, welcoming, stable. The soft pink was chosen because it is the international color of loving oneself and each other, it also is symbolic of vulnerability and nurturement. A vibrant green was selected to represent the fresh beginnings the group aims to create, and the charcoal gray was added to symbolize the idea that not everything is always black and white.
By taking on projects we feel passionate about, we get the chance to work with people we love and who we know will make an impact on our community. And we are oh-so-thankful for the incredible, and extremely rewarding, experiences we were given by the IRRC through the duration of this project.
If you’re interested in learning more about the IRRC or ways to get involved, and to view the new logo, visit their Facebook page: Immigrant and Refugee Resource Collaborative.
