Connecting across barriers

Brand identity :: Enlacé

The Western New York Coalition of Farmworker Serving Agencies had a real challenge on their hands. Their name was very long. In addition, a huge portion of their constituency do not speak English as their primary language, and—because their logo used a red apple—their uniforms included red baseball hats. Imagine trying to introduce yourself to newcomers, migrants, and farmworkers in that situation.

Their mission:

To promote justice, dignity and equity for migrants and farmworkers through advocacy, education, outreach and direct services. We empower our communities to achieve self-sufficiency by fostering collaboration among partners.

They worked with Causewave Community Partners to navigate this transition, looking at the decision from several angles. Ultimately, they chose to move forward with the new name, Enlace. It is a Spanish word that doesn’t have a direct English equivalent, and means synergy, partnership, and teamwork.

I sat in on some of their early meetings about the name itself, so that after they reached consensus to move forward I had enough background to provide some concepts. They wanted a logo to lean toward being unique, rather than fitting in among the logos of other organizations in their landscape. They also wanted it to be more clear than clever, use a completely new color palette, and maintain clean readability in many applications.

A winner quickly emerged, and their new identity is already helping them build bridges to a population that needs support now more than ever.