Cedarwood has served the Meadow Well estate in North Shields since 1980. Our website, reports and signage now look like different organisations. We are relaunching the site and want the brand settled first logo, palette, type and guidelines we can maintain ourselves.
What difference will you make?
How will this role help your organisation? (336 words)
For The People Who Use Cedarwood
Meadow Well is one of the most deprived neighbourhoods in England. The people who walk through our door are often deciding whether to trust us with something difficult a benefits decision that has gone wrong, a week with no food in the house, a young child they are worried about. That decision gets made in seconds, and how we look is part of it. A poster that reads as improvised, or a website that does not match the building, gives someone a reason to keep walking. A charity that looks organised is a charity people trust to actually sort the problem out.
There is a practical dimension too. Around 1 in 12 men has a red-green colour vision deficiency, and our current palette fails badly on that axis. Getting the accessibility right means our timetables, signage and forms work for everyone who needs them.
For our funding
We secured more than £173,000 in unclaimed welfare benefits for local residents last year, delivered 1,270 home cooked meals, and ran early years sessions attended 3,352 times. All of that is grant and contract funded, and every bid competes against organisations with communications teams. When our impact report, our website and our application pack look like one confident organisation, our case gets read on its merits. We are also mid-way through a capital redevelopment and a place-based funding programme, both of which will require us to persuade partners and public bodies. The brand is doing that work whether we have designed it or not.
For our team
We are a staff team of 9 with no designer and no marketing budget. At the moment, colleagues making a flyer or a social post are guessing. A clear identity with usable templates gives the whole team the ability to produce good work without asking anyone’s permission, and it holds after any one person leaves.
What You Get Back
A finished, visible identity in the world, used daily by a 45-year-old charity, with a client who will make decisions quickly and give you a proper hearing.
What are we looking for?
Essential
• A working brand designer or brand strategist with identity work in your portfolio. We are looking for someone who has taken a brand from thinking through to applied assets, rather than someone who designs individual pieces to an existing style.
• Confidence with a wordmark. The logo decision is the crux of this brief and it needs a designer who can argue a position on it.
• Working knowledge of colour and type systems, including accessibility. We are already working to WCAG standards and have audited for colour vision deficiency, so you will not be starting that conversation from scratch.
• The ability to hand over properly. Editable source files, logo masters in SVG, PNG and EPS, and a system a non-designer can hold together afterwards.
Desirable
• Experience of charity or public sector brands, particularly where the same identity has to work for a resident on a doorstep and a funder reading an application.
• Web design experience or comfort working alongside our web developer, since the site build is running in parallel.
• Familiarity with Canva, because that is where our team will maintain things once you have gone.
The kind of person this suits
Someone who will disagree with us. We have already built a colour system, drafted guidelines and written the website copy, and we have got attached to some of it. The most valuable thing you could do is tell us which parts are wrong and why. We would rather be corrected than flattered.
Someone comfortable designing for a real place rather than an abstract audience. Meadow Well has been written about a great deal, mostly by people who do not live here, and the identity has to read as belonging to the estate rather than being applied to it. If you find that constraint interesting rather than limiting, this will suit you.
Someone who can work with a client who moves quickly. Our Chief Executive is leading this directly and can make decisions without a committee. You will not be waiting weeks for feedback.
Not Required
You do not need to be local, and you do not need charity sector experience. You do not need to commit to the full 20 to 30 hours. A shorter contribution, whether that is a critique of what we have or the logo alone, would still move this on considerably.
Remote
What will you be doing?
The situation
Cedarwood has served the Meadow Well estate in North Shields since 1980. We run early years sessions, a social supermarket, a bistro, a meal delivery service, welfare and energy advice, learning programmes and activities for older adults, from one open door community centre. The work has grown quickly and the identity has not kept up. Our website, impact reports, building signage, funder applications and social media currently read as different organisations.
We are relaunching our website this year. We want the brand settled before that build goes further, rather than paying for it twice.
What We Already Have
This is a shaping job rather than a blank page. We hold full new website copy written and signed off, a settled tone of voice, a working colour system built on a generative rule and tested against WCAG accessibility standards, and a draft set of brand guidelines covering logo usage, typography, co-branding and governance. We have also audited the palette for colour vision deficiency and know where it fails.
We want that thinking challenged, not just executed.
What We Need You To Do
• Review what we have and tell us honestly what is working and what is not
• Resolve the logo our current mark is a plain wordmark and we need a view on whether it is refined or replaced
• Finalise the colour palette and a type pairing, with licensing that permits web, print and onward supply to third parties
• Draw lock-ups for our named services, including Flourish early years, Nourish Store and Nourish Bistro
• Produce 3 worked examples so we can see the system applied an A4 poster, a social post and the website home page
• Hand over editable source files and logo masters in SVG, PNG and EPS
How We Would Work
You would work directly with our Chief Executive, who is leading this personally. We are a small staff team of around 15, and several colleagues make posters and social content themselves, so whatever you design has to be maintainable by non-designers in Canva after you have gone. We can convene a reaction panel of residents, staff and a trustee to test options, which we think will be more useful to you than another round of opinions from us.
We can be quick on decisions and we will not disappear on you.
Time commitment
We estimate 20 to 30 hours across 2 to 3 months, flexible around your work. If that is more than you can give, we would still value a shorter piece a 2 hour critique of what we have, or the logo alone.
Why it matters
A charity that looks organised is a charity people trust with a benefits problem, a hungry week or a young child. Good design on this estate does practical work. It also makes every funding bid and partnership pitch we write easier to win.
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