When designing the branding of the Tarbolton Community Council before we had even started we knew what the goals were: The brand should appear authoritative; The brand should be easily recognisable; and the brand should be simple.
As a public sector body that people rely on for critical information the brand would have to appear trustworthy and authoritative no matter where it was displayed. We achieved this by making the brand simple and consistent to help make it easy to understand. We used simple colours and the name of the organisation in an easy to read, accessible, font to help people easily recognise and read it.
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As an organisation that has its aims tied very strongly to its core values and mission statement, we felt that it was important to also develop some sort of branding for its 3 core values: Community; Integrity; Prosperity.
We established a simple wordmark for these that makes them a core addition to the branding and can be applied to a variety of situations.
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The final addition to the brand was a request for a campaign that could be tied into print media and social media. Being a small village, Tarbolton Community Council wanted a motto that could embody the small community spirit that they have. Eventually, the campaign #WeAreTarbolton was decided on. Naturally, we created another component to the brand for this that can be applied to a variety of situations.
As the Tarbolton Community Council is a Public Sector Body this means that they have to meet certain legislation when it comes to accessibility of Information. Luckily, this is a topic that we specialise in and we were able to keep them following the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.
We used the Scottish Government Design System to not only ensure this accessibility but also to keep in line with that authoritative look that the brand was to give. Using the same design system that the Scottish Government and its sub organisations use gives it the authoritative and trustworthy feel that you need when designing a website for an organisation such as the Tarbolton Community Council
Unarguably, the most important page on this website is the Homepage. This page must be full of information without feeling too crowded because for a lot of people if they can't find what they are looking for on the homepage they will move on to another source and leave your website.
The purpose of the website was to provide vital information about the community to the community as well as display information about the community council in an easily accessible and friendly format. All the meeting minutes were backdated and uploaded to the website for public consideration as well as information about: business and organisation support; how to contact the community council; information on public consultations; and other vital information and external links that the community may need.
After working with the Tarbolton Community Council we finally understood that this is a sector that we should be working in, This is such an undervalued sector that is staffed by heroes within communities that selflessly give up their own time to help people in the community and make it an overall better place to live.
