Barnwood Trust Research

Barnwood Trust looked to us as their long term strategic brand partner to create the brand toolkit for their research body and implement it through all their research literature, both online and in print.

Barnwood Trust Research are the research arm of Barnwood Trust, a 200 year old trust based in Gloucestershire. Their aim is to improve the lives of those living with mental health challenges and physical disabilities. As part of their programme of work they fund and carry out research to report against the Trust’s key strategic objectives and, where appropriate, use this evidence to influence regional and central government policy.

As well as creating a brand that was true to the original Trust and felt part of the Barnwood family, we had to create a toolkit that worked across multiple touchpoints.
Full research report and summary report layouts needed to be designed and templates created so that the research had a coherent visual tone and voice. Barnwood Trust Research also wanted their reports to be as widely read as possible, with a particular focus on making sure those with physical disabilities could easily read the summary reports.

The challenge

Barnwood trust wanted to create a brand for their research that reflected their core principle of being as inclusive as possible.  This meant publishing the reports with people with severe physical disabilities in mind. This had to filter through to all of their research and the way it was communicated. The brand also needed to reflect the quality of the research it was presenting, so appeal to academics and also be accessible and warm.  With this in mind we delivered an innovative solution that broke with traditional digital reporting methods to bring it into the digital era and open the research up to readers of all physical ability.

Our solution

We created a strong brand that defined the Trust’s research and gave it a memorable yet respected visual voice. This included a colour palette that was sympathetic to the original Trust, but balanced it with more modern tones. Graph style guidelines and a simple yet strong illustration style allowed the summary reports to be brought to life.

With accessibility and inclusivity as a core principle of the brand, we took the reports online not just as a PDF of the final reports, but as a fully functioning microsite for each report. Our research showed that many of their audience with physical disabilities rely on mobile devices to access content, as they find them much easier to use and can be customised to their particular disability.

This allowed the reports to be easily read on mobile and tablet devices as well as on desktop machines. PDFs don’t respond to screen size so on smaller screens you have to pinch and zoom a report designed for A4 print formats; even as an able bodied person this can be frustrating for a whole document. The microsites enabled Barnwood Trust to remain true to their mission of being as inclusive as possible whilst delivering effective research that helps inform internal policy and policy of local and national government, ultimately improving the lives of those living with impairments.

By listening to the needs of their users and considering those as an integral part of the brand experience we were able to create a brand that delivers what its core mission sets out to achieve, thus giving the brand depth and integrity.

“Yoke skilfully and creatively developed a strong brand identity for the research programme and supported the Trust to produce a range of different outputs with varying levels of accessibility: full-length, technical research reports; a series of summary reports; and a range of infographic-style posters. Yoke supported the team to think about accessible communication on a number of levels: in terms of content (complexity/simplicity of data presented, language used, representational styles etc.) and in terms of addressing the challenges of communicating findings to people living with a range of impairments.
Our experience of working with Yoke has been wholly positive. They worked hard to ‘tune in’ to the work of the organisation and objectives of the research programme in order to produce appropriate, accessible materials within an overarching style consistent with the organisational brand. They brought a creative flair to the communication of complex research findings, which we simply could not have achieved without them. I can’t recommend them highly enough!”

Clare Fletcher - Head of research, Barnwood Trust Research

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