Branding a bold future for our region

Client

Tees Valley Combined Authority

Project

Tees Valley

Services

Brand Identity, Brand Strategy, Design

Sectors

Local Authority, Property & Placemaking

Branding a bold future for our region

The Brief

TVCA has grown significantly since 2016, resulting in confusion due to multiple brands and a lack of clear guidance. An over complicated brand structure made it hard for audiences to understand what TVCA is and what it does. We were engaged to clarify the brand architecture and create visual cohesion and increased recognition across all TVCA activity.

Background

Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) is a public sector body covering the five local authority areas in the Tees Valley and approximately 700,000 people. It’s responsible for driving economic growth and increasing prosperity across the region. Decisions about budgets, strategies and services are made at meetings of the cabinet, comprised of the elected mayor and local authority leaders.

The Solution

We turned the brief on its head. Rather than re-creating multiple logos for multiple sub-brands and trying to make them all feel cohesive, we moved away from siloed thinking to develop a single yet highly flexible brand system. And because TVCA is intrinsically linked to the area, we took the opportunity to brand the region, not just the authority.

Branding a bold future for our region

The Brief

Background

The Brief

The Solution

Go big or go home

At the heart of the brand, we needed an idea big enough to excite those inside and outside the Tees Valley about its potential. So we created a destination promise that covers everything from tourism and transport to investment and careers: "Anything is Possible" is genuinely ambitious, aspirational, and broad enough to encompass the myriad of experiences the region and the brand need to communicate.

Local hero

The Tees Valley archetype blend is pioneering, forging ahead by identifying untapped potential. Skilled in diplomacy and adept at navigating complexity, it encourages forward-thinking. Able to combine concept and theory, it charts new paths rather than retracing old ones. Defined by its strength of commitment, this bold change-maker champions the Tees Valley's future, bringing people together and driving progress. As always, the initial archetype exercise helps to frame a discussion around verbal identity.

Bold, energising, clarity

For the Tees Valley voice pillars we emphasised active, energetic boldness balanced with straight-forward clarity. Methodical professionalism rounds out the pillars and is reserved for times when the brand needs to deal with governance and less public facing documentation.

Tees Valley Verbal Identity – Champion of change.

The champion of change

A boldly energising voice that speaks in a way that is clear, natural and universally understood. Occasionally, however, the voice may become more formal and professional for internal or government facing communications. This is a voice with purpose, with a sense of momentum. It’s a voice that gets things done.

The Tees Valley voice wants you to go where it’s going, to do whatever it’s doing today. It’s enthusiastic. It’s positive. It believes in the region and it wants you to believe in it too.

This is a corner of the North East that’s shaping its own future. Where the next generation of creators, makers and doers are defining tomorrow. A land of hard grafters, fine crafters and good laughers. A region that’s surprising, inventive, and unstoppable all at once. Five unique boroughs. One remarkable region. This is Tees Valley, where anything is possible.

Peace in the Valley

One of the key challenges in the brief was bringing peaceful consistency and cohesion to the visually noisy range of different logos, badges and sub-brands that had been developed as TVCA grew. To fully express the potential of Tees Valley, we needed a font that was big enough, bold enough and unique enough to reflect the region and be able to contain everything that goes on there.

Valley Sans is designed to have minimal negative space, allowing it to act as a container for brand imagery. Built from scratch, in-house at Better, it comes complete with an expansive range of variable settings ensuring clarity at any size.

Pillars of the community

Our new brand system contains communications from all departments, but we still need a way to know who's speaking. By working with TVCA, we identified the four pillars that support the Tees Valley and gave each one a distinct colour. This way, everyone can tell who's talking at a glance. This eliminates the need for a multitude of logos and sub-brands and increases external recognition of the brand.

The dynamic valley

Created to echo our custom Valley Sans typeface, this dynamic abstract shape can be used to contain content or act as a window for imagery of life, locations and people in Tees Valley. Able to stretch to fit the shape of any application, it offers another way to show anything is possible.

A unified digital hub

As one of the first tasks of activation, we brought the brand to life online by merging TVCA's five considerable websites into one new unified site, built from scratch against a tight deadline of less than six weeks. This Herculean task required the team to migrate and unite a vast amount of highly complex data, then devise a new universal structure allowing all target audiences to easily navigate the site.The result is a perfect digital expression of our response to the brief, collating the scattered, siloed information and bringing everything into one place, under one clear, bold brand.

"TVCA has changed a lot in scope and remit since it first came into being and it was clear a refresh was needed. It was great to work with a local company that is as passionate about the area as we are to simplify the brand. In this new-look Tees Valley, we are able to communicate clearly with people about who we are, what we’re doing, and what we’re aiming to achieve, and that Anything is Possible – whether that be for those visiting, investing, working or travelling in our area."

Craig Peacock

Head of Marketing and Communications, Tees Valley Combined Authority