Bletchley & Fenny Stratford: Creating Community

Brief

Home to more than 21,000 people, Bletchley and Fenny Stratford is one of Milton Keynes’ largest and most diverse town council areas. With a renewed sense of ambition, a growing community and a £1.7m Community Hub on the way, the Town Council needed an identity that better reflected the place and its people. The existing logo had become dated and inconsistent, with little flexibility for modern communications. The challenge wasn’t to reinvent Bletchley and Fenny Stratford, but to create an identity that celebrated what was already there, while giving it room to grow.

Approach

People before places. That became our starting point. We developed a distinctive monogram built from flowing, interconnected paths, reflecting the streets, waterways and connections that bring the town’s communities together. The identity is deliberately flexible. A variable stroke allows the monogram to adapt across everything from official stationery to large-scale signage, while a wider colour palette gives community events and campaigns their own personality. But we wanted to take that flexibility further. We created a Living Logo Tool, allowing residents to personalise the identity with their own colours, shapes and patterns, while keeping the core mark recognisable. Rather than simply giving the community a new logo, we wanted to give them something they could make their own. Accessibility was considered throughout. We even developed our own colour contrast tool, Palette Lab, to help ensure the identity worked for everyone, without compromising on creativity. The result is a contemporary, accessible identity that can be suitably official when it needs to be, and full of personality when it doesn’t. One identity. Plenty of room for individuality.

Team on this project

• Fred Thonger , Creative Direction
• Alexa Soromenho, Design & Development
• Pete Spicer, Strategy