Women’s Aid identity
Women’s Aid is one of Ireland’s leading organisations working to end violence against women. Since its inception in 1974, Women’s Aid has been providing direct support to women and children suffering from domestic abuse and has been working tirelessly to improve societal and political responses to domestic violence. This involves advocating for policy change on issues related to domestic violence, supporting movements to enhance gender equality in society, providing training, carrying out research and running public campaigns. The provision of support services and this ongoing advocacy are the two key strands of Women’s Aid’s work. In a country where 1 in 4 women who have been in a relationship have been abused by a current or former partner, their work is as urgent and necessary as ever.
In 2020, a need was identified to update Women’s Aid’s identity. The new identity would have to capture these two strands of their work and speak to distinct audiences, loosely defined as women experiencing abuse, and ‘advocacy’ audiences comprising policy makers, journalists, other professionals and funders. It would be vital that the new identity expressed the compassion central to their work with service users, while also highlighting the important work they do on addressing structural issues and gender inequality. The existing Women’s Aid identity expressed strength and protection, but it was felt that the illustrative style would need to be updated to something more contemporary, and something that could sit comfortably in a number of applications – particularly in the digital world. Language were tasked with resolving these challenges in a new identity, one which would thread a line through the last 40 years of Women’s Aid, while capturing where the organisation was now and where it was going.