Zerofee. Good Thinking:

For some of us, com­ing back to work after the Christ­mas and New Year’s break is, at the very least, a grind. Often gloomy and cold, the season’s inevitable over-indulgence can leave many of us will­ing the end of Jan­u­ary and the wel­come sight of our next pay cheques. So, with this in mind, Blue Mon­day was cre­ated as an anti­dote to this noto­ri­ously dif­fi­cult time of year – another fab­u­lous, socially-focussed project cre­ated by Peo­ple United.

Launch­ing on Jan­u­ary 25^th 2010, every­one can get involved. Through even the sim­plest of ges­tures, a usu­ally trou­ble­some Mon­day, can be turned into an inspi­ra­tional day, pro­mot­ing, trust, friend­ship and human connections.

As soon as we heard about the project we con­nected with it, pro­vid­ing design dona­tion in the form of brand iden­tity and sup­port­ing web­site. Let’s face it – the last cou­ple of years have been some­what chal­leng­ing, so it’s great to get involved in some­thing with such a pos­i­tive mes­sage at its heart.

The iden­tity needed to show char­ac­ter­is­tics of strength and light­heart­ed­ness, whilst appeal­ing to as broad an audi­ence as pos­si­ble. Swap­ping the coun­ters of a heavy slab serif ‘B’ for hand-rendered, clas­sic cloud shapes and pair­ing a vibrant blue with an almost-black, resulted in a strong visual lan­guage that should see Blue Mon­day through many years of devel­op­ment and growth. With weather fea­tur­ing promi­nently across all Blue Monday’s assets, the visual lan­guage con­sis­tently marks the ten­sion between hap­pi­ness and sad­ness. Per­sua­sive, uplift­ing copy was kindly sup­plied by Mike Reed of Reed Words.

The out­come is pos­i­tive and play­ful, but also author­i­ta­tive. Nat­u­rally, we’re pleased that siteIn­spire liked it too. Hope­fully, all of this will encour­age involve­ment in the project and build a grow­ing and con­sis­tent com­mu­nity of pos­i­tiv­ity that can tackle the season’s heav­i­ness head on.