For the past six years we have been working with Cape Town-based charity, SAYes Mentoring, producing a variety of printed and digital materials, from leaflets and certificates to email templates and infographics.

SAYes Mentoring had only the loosest branding guidelines, and much of what they already had differed in all but colour. With a small budget, it seemed prudent that our approach should be to employ a corporate style they were happy with for the first project, and then develop that style into a brand as we went. This has worked so that as the charity grew, so did the guidelines; end users have not seen a dramatic change overnight and the charity is still recognisable to both supporters and sponsors. This simple style has enabled us to create literature that can be adapted for giving information, recruitment and fundraising, and has proved both practical and cost effective.

SAYes’s marketing and public-facing literature is aimed at gaining awareness, recruiting mentors and inviting sponsorship. Due to the nature of the politics of South African society, our main aim in the design is to be welcoming, while being representative of the people already involved with the charity, but also as broad-based as possible to be inclusive to all parts of the community.

In 2018 SAYes celebrated its 10th anniversary, and as they have grown and sought to expand their branding is once again being reconsidered to appeal to a global market.