Introduction
United for Wildlife was founded by Prince William and The Royal Foundation in 2014. It aims to make it impossible for traffickers to transport, finance, or profit from illegal wildlife products.
By working collaboratively with the transport and finance sectors, building key partnerships with law enforcement and NGOs, and sharing information and best practices across the sectors, and across borders, United for Wildlife is disrupting this criminal network globally.
These guidelines are intended to help protect and implement the United for Wildlife brand successfully and ensure consistency across our work.
Logo
The logo is the most important asset for our brand – it provides recognition across all channels of communication and its use is important to ensure consistency.
The logotype has two variants, the primary one being the full name of the brand, and the secondary one being used only when limited space is available. Wherever applicable, either of them can be accompanied by The Royal Foundation logo to underline the connection between the two organisations.
All our logotypes are monochromatic – either black or white, depending on the background they appear on.
They form a stamp that works together with a background image that delivers the colour aspect, creating a simple yet powerful combination. Don’t modify the logotype’s proportions or use it in combination with any other elements or apply any graphic treatments. Consistency of logotype usage is very important to maintain one image and one voice to deliver our message successfully.
Logo Metrics
The dimensional scale and placement of our logo along with its relationship with other logos is important to consider when placing in design layouts.
Please use the following guidance.
Partner brands
Our logo will often be used in combination with other logos, most often with member logos when working with our Taskforces on projects or reports.
The following provides guidance on use of the United for Wildlife logo in some of the most common layout situations.
Typography
Words are powerful and we would like ours to be clear, bold and heard. We want them to be simple and direct, standing out yet not pretentious or unnecessarily decorative. We want them to deliver a simple, powerful message and grab attention.
That’s why our main font is Avant Garde – a clean, sharp font, bold where it needs to be and delicate and easy to read where we would like to say a bit more.
It works across mobile and desktop devices and is legible and crisp at any resolution.
Iconography
An image is worth a thousand words. Often a visual explanation of a problem is much more impactful than long paragraphs of text.
That’s why, wherever applicable, we recommend the use of iconography.
The role of iconography across various channels is to mark key elements of the content and make it simpler for the user to navigate through it. Combined with bold headlines, icons create an easy-to-use and clear layout that is functional and user friendly, at the same time breaking the grid-based blocks of content and making it easier to understand and remember.
Icons are always related to wildlife and the natural world, and are kept simple, recognisable and always enclosed by a circle.
Neutral colour
We believe that the beauty of wildlife speaks for itself and that’s why our main brand colours are neutrals of ink black, paper white and cool greys. Where possible use these colours for typography, rules and graphic ornaments.
Colour palettes
Photography should be used to create the prominence and direction of colour on the layouts and the following colour palettes should be used carefully to enhance or compliment photography choices.
Photography
We believe photography provides the real impact and connection with the user. It forms the base for the typography and branding to stand out in a powerful, serious and elegant way without being obtrusive or clichéd.
We use neither safari shots nor travel brochure images. The imagery is always honest and shows animals and their environment in a respectful way, inviting the user to appreciate the beauty in the wild world before it disappears.
Wherever possible, photography is used as a background for the content. It creates an environment in which the message can be delivered in the most powerful way, but at the same time enhancing the visual experience.
Patterns / textures
Textures, like a close-up of elephant skin or a rhino horn, provide not only a background for a piece of content, but also bring the animals closer to the user and makes the experience a little more personal and intimate.
Geometric assets
We introduced basic geometrical shapes to break up the grid and find an additional way to focus users’ attention.
Their role is to introduce a dynamic flow and help define areas of text content.
They also improve legibility by enhancing the contrast between the background and the copy.
The circle and rectangle hold a special role here, being widely used as image content containers and/or navigation elements.
Infographics
Explaining large amounts of data using text only is not user friendly and wherever possible, we try to find a visual way to do it.
Hence the use of info-graphics, where important facts are translated into easy-to-understand yet powerful images that can also be shared on social media or in print.
It’s important to maintain the simplicity and style of the iconography created for this purpose.
Comms examples:
Display / posters
Events materials are a common output for United for Wildlife. The promotion of any event may include advertising posters, roll-up banners, presentation stage design and delegate materials such as lanyards.
The event creative should be consistent across all these materials
Comms examples:
Presentation decks
Much of our work is about raising awareness and recruiting volunteers.
We use events and presentations to help do this, which may feature high profile presenters or venues. Our presentation standard should therefore reflect this.
Presentation decks should be created in professional industry-standard applications such as Microsoft PowerPoint, Apple Keynote or Adobe Creative Cloud.
All decks should follow good practice in presentation design and in line with brand guidelines.
