EASA Branding

2024–2025

Scope:
Brand Strategy & Visual Identity

Client:
European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA)

Field:
Academic Association / Social Sciences

A systemic identity refresh for Europe’s leading learned society for social anthropologists. This project transformed a legacy mark into a dynamic and accessible visual system designed to support a large-scale institutional ecosystem.

This project initially launched as a website redesign, but a deep-dive visual communication analysis revealed a more fundamental challenge: the association lacked a consistent brand foundation that could serve as the necessary visual base for their website refresh.

I pivoted the strategy to first establish a unified visual language and robust design system base, ensuring all future digital and print output would project the institutional confidence, clarity and prestige appropriate for a leading academic body.

The design process began with the iterative refinement of the existing logo, honoring the original “spiral” petroglyph – a concept representing European heritage, community and academic processes. The goal was to move from a singular icon to a versatile logo system.

Click or drag on the image to compare the old and new logo marks.

I redrew the mark for technical precision and expanded it into a system of eight core variations – each in full-color, monochrome, and reversed versions to ensure high-fidelity reproduction across all media.

To support complex academic content and digital interfaces, I established a modern typography system pairing Nunito Sans as the primary typeface for its approachable and humanist qualities with Barlow for structured headings and secondary elements. This combination balances academic authority with contemporary digital readability.

I developed a comprehensive color palette to reflect the association’s renewed image of openness and dynamism. This system includes primary, neutral, and accent colors supported by three secondary tiers in varying tints. This palette establishes a stable institutional core, ensuring consistent brand recognition across EASA’s centralized communications.

The project culminated in a 40-page Brand Guidelines manual. This document serves as the primary visual “source of truth” for the association, codifying the rules for logo usage, typography, color systems, and spatial layout principles. By defining these design tokens, I provided EASA with a scalable framework for maintaining brand integrity across decentralized outputs.

Example use cases demonstrate the visual system in real-world scenarios. Drawing on my anthropology background, I translated EASA’s core values of inclusivity and accessibility into a visual strategy. This included selecting imagery and layout structures that celebrate diversity and ensure high contrast and legibility for the contemporary anthropological community.

What began as a tactical update evolved into a comprehensive identity redesign. This now serves as a scalable design framework, effectively translating a 35-year-old legacy institution into a vibrant and contemporary visual ecosystem equipped for the complexities of 21st-century digital communication.