Sewing Collaboration with ChangeBack to the roots of Central and Eastern Europe

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To connect. To inspire. To move forward. Together, twenty five countries at a time. That is the mission of CEE Changers. Ours was to create the brand symbol that would tell the tale visually.

The TaskCEE (Central and Eastern Europe) is a part of Europe that stems from Eastern

Germany and Austria, spreads to the south towards Turkey and Greece and then

stretches all the way up in the north to Ukraine and Russia, coming to a total of twenty

five diverse countries. CEE Changers is an online community that aims to work actively

with that historically problematic diversity and in fact make good use of it. Created

for the startup activists, the platform aims to bring all of them closer, and foster a new

habit of sharing, problem-solving and cooperation that transcends national borders.

With roots from the very region, CEE Changers is created “by the community for the

community.”

Our task was to craft a brand symbol that unites those ideas and then implement the

visual language on the community’s website.

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The ProcessTo discover the depths of the CEE Changers brand was to

rediscover our very own roots too. Even though most of the

countries from CEE are neighbours, the collaboration or

connectivity has never been a defining characteristic of our,

at times, troubled relationships. Change, innovation, success,

idealism: all these words sounded like a breath of fresh air. But

we needed to link them beyond their direct meaning in a brand

mark with a higher spirit.

We immediately set on a discovery journey for the common

denominator. In symbolism, in language and in history…

More than half of the CEE countries are of Slavic descent.

We could not skip that. We began at the Slavic neopaganism.

Slavic artistic visions are believed to have existed even before

Christianity but there is almost no written or archaeological

evidence to showcase them. Yet what is clear is that nationalism,

concern for the environment, warrior themes and indigenous

values were prevalent subject matters.

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We did not stop at the past though. We were working with the

concept of “working together towards a common goal”, a rather

modern concern for the more than 200 million inhabitants

of the CEE region. We pushed ourselves to the core value of

collaboration. We worked with typography because we wanted

to see where the two distinct alphabets, latin and cyrillic, could

have a contemporary date.

The search iteratively revealed the spirit of CEE Changers. We

found three forms that embodied that spirit. We called those

Collaboration, Network and Local Meets Global. It was time to

make a choice.

We were fascinated by the Slavic roots connection, but inside

we felt it did not do justice to the noble and almost avant-garde

philosophy of CEE Changers - moving beyond centuries of

differences, the region could work together, building a whole,

which is far bigger than the sum of its parts. That togetherness,

we mostly found where the two “C”s of Collaboration

intertwined. Their seamless symbiosis accurately expressed

the idealistic nature of CEE Changers, while the commonality

spread even as far as languages and alphabets go. Collaboration

and change were forever connected. Tied as good partners, we

made the final decision.

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Once we had the brand symbol in place, we moved on to match

the colour scheme that would best suit the brand identity and

context. We went through a few variations, leaving powerful

colours behind due to their cultural baggage in the region

and skewed towards the stability and respect of blue. But it

could not be any blue. It had to be bright and humane just as

the relationships, the platform of CEE Changers, was aiming

to foster. The chosen shade of blue communicates credibility

and trustworthiness, yet does not suffocate with unnecessary

stiffness and formality.

Using the light blue colour as a starting point, we chose

the secondary colours for brand extensions and CTA. We

experimented and settled on green, red and dark blue, but we

left the door open for more colours to come in. We wanted to

remain flexible and open-minded because we could only dream

what would come next from the future changers of the region.

Thank you for the attention.

“The guys at Kickflip are geniuses, and they make me happy while brewing the new CEE Changers branding.”

-Anca Albu, CEO

www.kickflipx.comhi@kickflipx.com

Victor Hugo 3, ap. 4b,1124, Sofia, Bulgaria