Ombudsman Saskatchewan Rebrand & Modern Visual Identity
Ombudsman Saskatchewan
Ombudsman Saskatchewan is the Office of the provincial Ombudsman and the Public Interest Disclosure Commissioner for Saskatchewan. They work to ensure the government is always accountable, acts with integrity, and treats people fairly.
The Challenge
When Saskatchewan’s new Ombudsman, Sharon Pratchler, was appointed, she wanted to rebrand the organization. Specifically, she wanted Ombudsman Saskatchewan to have a modern brand and logo, using their new messaging, “We hear you, we see you, what you say matters,” as a guiding light. The Ombudsman logo has traditionally been a variation of an ‘O,’ but Sharon wanted something new and different.
The Thinking
Our designer dove into the brainstorming process, starting with pencil-on-paper sketches inspired by Ombudsman Saskatchewan’s values, mission, and descriptive adjectives. These early sketches explored literal interpretations of key themes and metaphors, which were then mixed, refined, and developed into more unique ideas. To ensure originality, we also researched visual identities of similar organizations to make sure we were carving out a distinctive path.
Before our clients see a first version, we go through several internal versions to refine our creative and push boundaries. We have a rule: we only ever present creative we’d be proud to have a client choose.
This project started with 30 initial concepts, which we refined and explored until we had a few strong contenders ready for digital development. From there, we evaluated our strongest concepts for how well they met the brief and how well they told a story. Which visuals held meaning? Which felt fresh, modern, and aligned with the client’s values? The strongest ideas went through multiple iterations (sometimes up to eight!) before reaching final form.
Once all was said and done, we presented our top three designs to the Ombudsman Saskatchewan team from which they collectively chose their favourite.
The Result
The team at Ombudsman Saskatchewan fell in love with their new logo and branding. Our brilliant designer incorporated several layers of meaning into the new logo, symbolizing the holding of space, support, caring, and fairness by the organization as a whole.
In addition to providing a one-page brand guide that highlights their new logo and branding, we helped refresh the client’s website. As this wasn’t a complete overhaul, we focused on updating typography and colours to match their new visual identity and offered a few small recommendations to improve search and navigation.
With a modern brand and beautiful new logo, Ombudsman Saskatchewan launched this new era of ensuring integrity and accountability with style.
