Sustainable Futures Collaborative
Sustainable Futures Collaborative is an independent research organisation analysing frontier issues in climate change, energy, and environment. We at Studio Ping Pong worked with them on their identity and branding collaterals.
Sustainability and future are both strongly linked with the concept of time. For the logo, the sun emerged as an apt representation for SFC and its goal of driving policies to usher in a new dawn.
The sun is an ever-present cosmic phenomena that marks the passage of time and is the producer of solar energy, one of the most abundant sources of clean energy available to us at the moment. Across cultures, it has stood as a symbol for hope, longevity, and energy. Hence, we chose the sun to represent SFC which stands for the same overarching ideas.
Two typefaces were chosen for the organisation: IBM Plex Sans for headings and body copy, and Lusitana for certain collateral titles. The fonts were chosen for their structured look and readability. It was important to have an accessible type and a font that would give SFC the weight their work required.
As policy-makers and researchers, SFC produces a high volume of publications. Public domain images, due to their abundance and easy availability, worked perfectly for this. The images underwent a visual treatment, where cool and warm colours were used to denote effects of global warming. In certain collaterals, SFC, as a black band cutting across the page, represented the mediator driving change between the cause and effect.
Each gradient combination corresponded to a different sector of SFC’s work: from climate policy to adaptation and resilience.
Operating on an academic and institutional level, the branding had to look formal and legitimate but also capture the collaborative’s vigour. Natural colours were used as restrained gradients to evoke the impact of global warming, as well as the hope for progress towards a brighter, sustainable future.
