The Gender, Justice and Security Hub
(5-Year Project)
| BRANDING | LOGO | BRAND GUIDELINES | TEMPLATES | PRINT |
“Claire has worked with us at the LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security and the UKRI funded Gender, Justice and Security where she designed a great brand for us. Claire has always been great at interpreting information and research that can be complex, or perceived to be less visually interesting into something we could not have envisioned helping us communicate our research so much better.
It’s a pleasure to work with Claire and I am sure the personal relationship we have been able to build has only benefitted our work and it really does make all the difference to work with somebody that is so responsive and understanding in the way we want to develop our visuals.”
Client
The Gender, Justice and Security Hub is a five-year project led by LSE’s Centre for Women, Peace and Security. Working with partners around the world, the Hub is working on two of the UN Sustainable Development Goals – gender equality and peace, justice and strong institutions. The project is developing an evidence-base around gender, justice and inclusive security in conflict-affected societies.
I used to work for LSE, managing their in-house design department for more than ten years. It’s through this network that I got to know Nicky and the hub team.
Brief
I have worked with the GJS Hub across its 5-year lifecycle, originally getting involved to work on the initial branding in 2019. Given the seriousness of the subject matter of conflict and gender-based violence, this tricky branding brief needed handling sensitively. With the devastating consequences on individuals and communities it was crucial to steer away from any form of cliché and the GJS Hub wanted to avoid having any photographs portraying women as victims.
Once the overall visual identity was in place, I continued to work with the hub on event and marketing materials, including brochures for large international events.
In 2024 they approached me to work on their final report and accompanying materials to help ensure their work remained open to a future audience. The purpose of the report was to showcase a range of the hub’s individual and collective work, highlighting key themes findings and recommendations. There was also an aim to reflect on the model used by the hub and its approach to feminist research and practice.
Creative
I came up with an initial range of visuals that focused on the SDGs at the heart of the project rather than looking at the women impacted by the issues being addressed. I chose a typographical solution and partnered with Liz Mosley to create lettering in the key languages of the partner institutions for ‘gender equality’ and ‘peace, justice and strong institutions’.
I tied the graphic element of the type into the overall visual branding using a strong colour palette to convey optimism, innovation and intellect.
The branding I created for GSJ remained consistent across the duration of the project. Over the years the hub collaborated with some illustrators to further enhance the visual identity and incorporate concepts from their research.
For the final materials they enlisted Hayfaa Chalabi, a talented illustrator they had previously worked with. Hayfaa and I worked together at the visuals stage to ensure the style and layout worked with the illustrations she had produced, with sizing and layout accommodating her designs.
When I was first approached about the report it was yet to be written but was estimated at more than 300 pages. I worked with the team to prepare a schedule with staggered sections to allow for design to take place alongside the writing and final pulling together. Due to the scale of the work, I brought in two designers to work alongside me and allow for faster production.
The final report – a massive 318 pages – was a combination of case studies, key findings, recommendations and more. The visuals therefore needed to work at an overarching level to section out the content and provide differentiation as well as make the data as accessible as possible. I used elements of the illustrations to demarcate the sections and make sure the report had a flow to it. I met regularly with my team of designers to ensure consistency as we began to produce the final sections of the document.
The report needed to be approachable and hold readers’ interest. To ensure the report’s findings and recommendations reached as many people as possible, we created a summary document in English which was also translated into 10 additional languages, from the more straightforward Spanish to right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Pashto. It was quite a challenge to get InDesign to work with these languages and involved working directly with translators to ensure the accuracy of the lettering.
As well as the design, I managed the printing of the main report, summaries and various additional items such as country briefs. These were all produced to a high quality and in a timely manner.
Impact
The initial brief was difficult as it’s such a hard concept to visualise without going down the photographic route, but the design was very well received, and the visuals remained in place throughout the five-year project.
The final project represented a true joint effort between the hub team at LSE, my team of designers and the printers. It was a huge success, and everything was delivered in time for the scheduled launch.
Although the GSJ Hub is no longer active, the amazing work that took place over the course of the 5-year project is available online for access by future researchers.
“I highly recommend working with Claire for design on large-scale research and policy publications (amongst many other things too!). While working on the Gender, Justice and Security Hub at LSE, Claire helped bring our vision for the 300-page text into engaging, aesthetic, and accessible print and digital formats. She is detail-oriented, quick to respond, and really wonderful to work with. I will definitely be reaching back out to Claire for the next project too.”
