Building brands people can live with.

Building brands people can live with

Creating a civic identity for a whole town is a delicate business.

It has to represent every resident, every neighbourhood and every opinion about what the area is, and what it could become. It also has to work everywhere: on a council report, a social media post, a street flag, a community building and, ideally, at the smallest possible size… without turning into an indecipherable blob.

That was the challenge behind our work with Bletchley and Fenny Stratford Town Council.

The brief was not simply to design a new logo. It was to create a brand for a Council that had grown in confidence, ambition and visibility, and to help build civic pride across one of Milton Keynes’ largest and most diverse town council areas.

A council ready to move forward

Bletchley and Fenny Stratford Town Council represents more than 21,000 residents across 10 wards. It is one of the most diverse parishes in Milton Keynes, made up of distinct neighbourhoods, communities and businesses that continue to grow.

The Council has grown alongside them: becoming more active, visible and ambitious, delivering more services, investing in local facilities and taking a stronger role in community life.

Its existing identity had served its purpose, but the world around it had moved on. The logo was dated, overly detailed and difficult to use consistently. Parts were so small and unclear that, when it appeared mirrored on a report template, nobody noticed.

That is not a criticism of the people who created it. It is simply what happens when an identity designed for one era is asked to work in another.

Today, a civic logo needs to work on digital documents, websites, social profiles, app icons, favicons, signs and buildings. The Council did not need a logo that looked newer for the sake of it. It needed an identity that reflected the organisation it had become, and one that could confidently carry it into what comes next.

The case for change

There was, understandably, some resistance. Some questioned whether a rebrand was necessary at all, or whether it represented a worthwhile investment. We have also become familiar with proposed creative routes being dismissed before we have had the chance to explain the thinking behind them. Change can be uncomfortable, and we completely understand that.

When an organisation has used an identity for a long time, it carries memories, goodwill and a sense of continuity. The role of the project was not to dismiss that, but to explain why moving forward mattered.

A civic identity needs to do more than win approval in a meeting. It needs to be recognisable, useful and meaningful to the community it represents.

The Sycamore Buildings project made that particularly clear. The Town Council is bringing Sycamore Hall and Sycamore House together to create a vibrant, multi-purpose community hub for social, recreational, cultural, youth and educational activity. It is a significant investment in the area’s future, so the new brand needed to feel capable of standing alongside it.

Changing the story

Bletchley’s reputation does not always reflect the full experience of the area today. It overlooks the independent retailers and restaurants, green spaces, community spirit and the changes taking place across the town.

Of course, A brand cannot change public perception overnight. A new logo cannot make someone fall in love with a place they have never visited. But it can begin to signal that something has changed.

The real shift happens when people experience the area for themselves: when they visit the town centre, discover an independent business, spend time in a green space or take part in something happening in the community.

The identity becomes part of that experience: a recognisable signal of who is investing in the area and who is there to support it.

The ambition was to create a brand residents could trust. Something that felt like it was on their side. Something that could build civic pride.

People before places

The more we explored Bletchley and Fenny Stratford, the clearer it became that this is not a place with one single story.

From the Italian workers and families drawn to the area’s brickworks, to London overspill communities and generations of newer residents, Bletchley and Fenny Stratford has long been a place of arrival, change and connection. Local names such as London Pride and the Bow Bells on the Lakes Estate still reflect those links to the capital and Cockney culture.

There were plenty of landmarks we could have used: Bletchley Park, canals, brickworks, town centres and green spaces. But Bletchley Park sits outside the Town Council’s parish area, and no single place could tell the whole story.

The message from the Council was simple: put people before places.

So, rather than create a literal identity built from landmarks, we created a shared symbol for belonging, connection and civic confidence

Keeping what people knew

The Council wanted to retain its established connection to green and yellow. Our task was to give those familiar colours more clarity, contrast and confidence within a broader, more flexible system.

The result is a more confident primary palette for official communications, while the wider palette gives the brand greater range for campaigns, events and community activity. The aim was to make it authoritative when it needed to be, without making it feel stiff all the time.

Accessibility shaped the system from the beginning. “Works for most people” is not a good enough standard when you are communicating with more than 21,000 residents.

To help with this, we developed Palette Lab during the project to test colour combinations throughout the creative process, helping ensure the system remained expressive while supporting legible print and digital communications. Read more about Palette Lab here

We also chose Atkinson Hyperlegible as the primary typeface, giving the Council a clear, friendly and consistent typographic voice.

More than a logo

The final outcome was a complete brand guide covering the logo, colour palette, typography and principles for creating on-brand content.

At the centre of the identity, B, &, F and S interlock to create one connected mark. Portrait and landscape versions give it flexibility across different spaces, from building signage to a tiny social media icon. On resident-facing communications, it sits alongside the full Council name so there is no mistaking who it represents

The brand guide brings everything together: colour, typography, layout and graphic elements, with local photography keeping the community at the heart of the identity.

A living identity

One of the most distinctive parts of the project is the logo-maker tool we created for the Council.

A traditional identity is often treated as finished once the logo files and guidelines have been delivered. This one is intended to keep changing, evolving and responding to the people it represents: a living identity.

The tool allows residents to create their own variations of the Bletchley and Fenny Stratford identity, experiment with the monogram and take part in shaping what civic pride can look like.

That makes the identity more than a fixed mark owned by the Council. It creates a space for participation.

We will continue to develop the tool and support workshops with residents to test how people use it. The aim is not to replace the core identity, but to give the community a way to make it their own.

A brand can be consistent without being static.

Belong and flourish

At first, the new identity received a mixture of reactions. This is exactly why civic branding needs to be approached carefully: the brand has to work for the organisation, but it also has to earn its place in the community.

The next stage is seeing how it behaves in the real world: on community buildings, social media, official correspondence, publications, flags, signage and local events. Recognition is built through those repeated everyday encounters.

The new Bletchley and Fenny Stratford identity is designed to reflect a community that is proud, diverse, welcoming and forward-looking. It acknowledges what came before without becoming trapped by it, and creates a system that can be official when necessary, expressive when appropriate and accessible throughout.

Most importantly, it puts people before places, because a community brand should not simply tell people where they are. It should help them feel that they belong there.