Encer, the brand design division of Oyemaja.
Oyemaja, founded in 2019 as The Oyemaja Foundation and celebrating its anniversary, briefed us to design thematic brand visuals that portrayed its growth and renewed goals through its 3 years journey.
To do this, we took a look at the core projects of the Group which exemplified its motto – “Making You Better”; particularly The Oyemaja Fellowship, The Oyemaja Executives Magazine and The Grey Collection. This helped us understand the best approach in devising the right theme and choosing the right colours, fonts, typography and images for the brand design.
Knowledge and empowerment for entrepreneurs and students resonated across those initiatives. Young adults have been the target audience since inception of each project, the knowledge-hungry and fast-paced section of the nation’s population that desire a map to aid to facilitate its speed and not a trial-and-error approach that quells its enthusiasm. We therefore centered our brand design around vitality and evolution.
Colours:
We chose yellow because we wanted to depict life and vibrancy, an oyemaja effect that uplifts your mood and makes you feel immediately better after partaking in or benefiting from the organization’s several programs. We also wanted a colour that drew attention and made the anniversary campaign design stand out especially among the high-spirited young adults. We complemented these colors with black and white, the Oyemaja colours, to harmonize the original visual identity design with this campaign theme.
Typography:
We created numeric fonts, primarily to serve as the countdown for the anniversary brand design. These fonts are bold and sharp, with only 1-3 originally developed for the 3 years anniversary. (Numbers 4 and 5 were developed subsequently). Created with square edges, thick, stacked and stretched, they depict the organization’s building processes and growth attitude over 3 years. Supplementing this typeface, we made use of fonts like Poppins and Montserrat across publicity/marketing materials for their simplicity and boldness.
Imagery:
To further depict life and vibrancy, we carefully selected images that depicted energy and high-spirited activities such as skating, dancing, rock-climbing etc across several locations/nations.
The major target audience being between the ages of 13 – 35, we made use of pictures that captured that age bracket. These elements (including objects such as hot air balloons, clouds, etc) revolve around a hand raising 3 fingers to depict Oyemaja’s 3rd anniversary. This, we also replicated across the Oyemaja Fellowship Challenge Poster designs.
The Oyemaja Fellowship Logo
The original logo design of the Oyemaja Fellowship brand was a stock image of an owl – representing knowledge and creativity. We decided a redesign of the logo was expedient to give the project its own original brand and visual identity.
Formerly a full bodied owl, we got rid of the wings and retained to the head. Adopting a minimalist approach, we maneuvered basic shapes – circles and triangles, to craft a recognizable head.
