WWF rebranded by Arthur Steen Horne Adamson

The consultancy was approached by WWF in January 2009 on the strength of previous work.

Winnie De’Ath, director of communications at WWF UK, says, ’We felt that the panda could work harder for us and that we had an opportunity to give people a fresh look at what we do.’ She adds, ’Our aim is to engage a wider audience through our refreshed identity.’

The project involved a global audit across 12 countries. Marksteen Adamson, partner at ASHA, says, ’We looked at the visual image of how WWF was distributing its message from a tone-of-voice point of view.

’We realised that the way the identity was being applied was consistent, but only in terms of the logo in the top left-hand corner. The rest was up for grabs – the way it used images, diagrams and charts.’

ASHA built on the existing logo, but aimed to ’set the panda free’. Adamson says, ’The issue has always been that over the years people have started to see WWF as an organisation that just deals with species, but it deals with so much more.

’We took the panda icon and turned it into a window where you can see all the activities WWF does. The other key focus was to separate the “emotional” from the “science”.’

For the new website, ASHA created full brand guidelines and online templates. The consultancy also created a ’boiler plate’ for branding all communications material containing the WWF mission statement and logo, and an exclusively cut signature font, including a panda punctuation mark.

The new visual identity will roll out this week on WWF’s annual and Global Planet reports, before being applied across all material and the website leading up to WWF’s 50th anniversary next year.