The sun puddle sanctuary: Ray Foundation

Development of a brand and identity for the Ray Foundation for homeless animals

BrandingCorporate identityPackageStrategy

About

RAY Foundation has existed since 2015. It helps animal shelters – creates and supports infrastructure for zoo-protection: connects volunteers, vet-clinics, organizes sterilization and treatment of animals, collects donations, pays for transportation of animals, trains owners and their pets. This Foundation does not simply “put out fires” but solves structural problems and does everything to make more animals happy. RAY invests in education to create more people who know what they are doing with animals to, in turn, reduce the number of homeless animals.

During seven years of work the Foundation has significantly grown in size and was in need of a brand overhaul with the development of positioning and visual parts. It was important for us to reach two goals: to make the Foundation more recognizable for commercial organizations that seek collaboration with it and to make it memorable to regular people who may sympathize with its goal.

The task:

It was necessary to create a competitive positioning that would inspire confidence in the Foundation and at the same time emphasized that the Foundation employs professionals – everyone from managers to zoopsychologists.

  • At the same time, the concept of identity had to take into account scaling – the Foundation planned to launch new projects and programs, including educational, aimed at increasing social responsibility and involving people of different ages, as well as expanding the reach of the Foundation.
  • Visual components had to increase recognizability.
  • All combined it had to attract new business-partners and help from individuals.

The main graphic image – a sun puddle that is warm with the light of happy animals, that are next to their human, at home, in the warmth and coziness.

What did we do

  • We studied the situation with the Foundations and their communications and decided to avoid the standard bogeyman method by looking at the issue from a new angle: show the result – an animal with a loving owner. Reason being that one helps animals first and foremost to make their lives better.
  • We created a new positioning for the Foundation: RAY will do anything to make animals happy. And how do happy animals look? They almost glow from the inside, they have everything – a home and loving owners.
  • Based on this positioning we formulated core principles of the brand: kindness, empathy, combined with honesty, professionalism and systematic approach. Then we constructed the brand platform: defined the area of brand positioning, mission, character, the core idea and ToV of the RAY Foundation.

  • We came up with the main graphic image – a sun puddle that is warm with the light of happy animals, that are next to their human, at home, in the warmth and coziness.
  • We updated the logo to make it more readable from a distance, give it, and the Foundation as well, a collected and professional look.
  • We put together a palette of brand colors in warm, pleasant shades that were used in typography, backgrounds and photos.
  • The animals that are depicted on top of the sun puddle are hand-drawn, such schematic illustrations are visible and readable, and the naive style of illustration conveys emotionality.
  • To conclude, we developed models for the most suitable for the purposes of the Foundation – donation boxes, pocket stickers, stickers for transport, covers and other merchandise, which sometimes, when needed, glows.

Result

In January 2023 the Ray identity got silver in the international WBDS competition.


«Ohmybrand has done a lot of work, carefully studied the goals and objectives of the Foundation, its audience and mission – wrote in Ohmybrand from the Foundation «RAY». – Thanks to this work new branding, which we have already partially implemented in social networks, reflects our style of communication with subscribers and helps to attract new supporters». Employees of the Foundation are sure that after the rebranding RAY will be able to strengthen its positions, this will attract new partners and new volunteers, and as a result, more and more animals will glow with happines

клиент

Ray Foundation

Team

Creative Director – Nadezhda Parshina
Strategy – Vadym Bogdan
Design – Alya Zaripova, Anastasiya Panarina, Sergey Derevyanchenko
Consultants – Pool agency, Evgeny Kashirin, Vladymir Matkhanoc
Type TT Hoves Pro