Digitaal Toegankelijk

2022
Branding
Strategy
Branding book
Logo design

Background info

Digitaal Toegankelijk (known as the Accessibility Act in English) is an accredited research and training agency specialising in digital accessibility and WCAG compliance. To become a recognised organisation, they needed a complete rebrand and website overhaul. I led the design for this project, creating the strategy, brand book, logo, and website.

My workflow

1. Strategy

Digitaal Toegankelijk started as a simple idea but grew quickly. There was no clear branding strategy, so I decided to develop a comprehensive strategy from scratch.

2. Visual Identity

With the strategy in place, I created three distinct visual directions. From these, I developed the colour palette, typography, and logo.

3. Brand book

Once the visual identity was finalised, I documented the strategy and design elements in a brand book. This included templates and guidelines to ensure the brand remains consistent and future-proof.

4. Webdesign

The website needed to reflect the new strategy, so I completely redesigned it. Accessibility was a priority to demonstrate that accessible design improves usability for everyone. But in this case I only highlight the branding part.

The strategy

The target audience was not people with disabilities, but (semi-)governmental organisations required to comply with EU accessibility regulations. The strategy focused on showing real impact through stories of people whose lives are improved by digital accessibility. By highlighting these human stories, the audience could see the tangible benefits and understand that Digitaal Toegankelijk works closely with those facing digital challenges daily.

A page from the strategy book. With the old logo of Digitaal Toegankelijk.

Visual Identity

To understand the stakeholders’ preferences, I presented three style directions:
1. A corporate look with lots of blue to convey trust and leadership
2. A minimal style with organic shapes and colours to represent humans and their stories.
3. A newspaper-inspired style positioning Digitaal Toegankelijk as the go-to platform for digital accessibility information.

The stakeholders chose a combination of the organic colours from the second option and the newspaper style of the third. This guided the development of colours, typography, and logo.

Concept 1

Concept 2

Concept 3

Logo

I began sketching ideas on paper, experimenting with negative space to represent contrast, which is one of the key aspects of accessibility.

The final logo resembles the contrast icon combined with the letter "D" and also suggests an eye or human. It is simple, memorable, and meaningful.

From Sketch to end result.

Style guide

After final approval, I created a detailed style guide to future-proof the brand. Ensuring WCAG compliance was a priority, so I included social media templates and font sizing guidelines.

Notably, the body font is FS Me, a typeface designed in collaboration with people who have learning disabilities to improve readability.

Conclusion

This project brought together strategy, visual identity, and accessibility to create a unified brand for Digitaal Toegankelijk. By developing a clear brand direction, a distinctive logo, and a fully accessible website, the organisation is now well positioned to communicate its mission and meet the needs of its audience. The process highlighted the importance of combining strong design principles with practical accessibility standards.

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