The Guild of
St. George rebrand
The Guild of St. George is a charitable organisation rooted in craftmanship, rural economies, and community.
Inspired by the story of St. George, and the organisations connection to nature and traditional craft, the visual identity combines organic patterns, earthy colour palettes and refined typography to create a modern yet historically grounded brand system.
Before
After
Typeface selection
The brand’s primary typeface, Carilliantine, has been chosen for the main logo and headings because of its distinctive character and strong presence. Its unique letterforms and ligatures give the brand a memorable, recognisable look while communicating confidence, creativity, and approachability.
Primary typeface
Raleway serves as the secondary typeface for the brand, carefully selected for its clarity and versatility. Its simple, modern forms provide a neutral counterpoint to the expressive and distinctive Carilliantine, making it ideal for body copy, supporting text, captions, and any content where readability and comprehension are paramount.
Secondary typeface
Overall, pairing both Raleway with Carilliantine, the brand achieves a balanced typographic hierarchy: headings and logos draw attention and convey personality, while Railway maintains consistency and ease of reading across extended materials. Its use ensures that all communications, whether digital or print, are legible, and visually harmonious, supporting the overall identity.
Colour palette
The palette centres on dark and light greens, complemented by subtle touches of gold and blue. Green embodies growth, care, and stewardship, gold conveys optimism, and blue brings stability and trust, whilst giving a subtle reference to the colour of John Ruskin’s eyes.
By keeping the palette close to the original colours, the brand maintains a sense of continuity while evolving visually. This approach ensures the identity continues to reflect the charity’s values of inspire, care, educate, and connect.
Research
Through looking at the current visual identity and talking to the guild members of the charity including the client Simon Seligman, we realised that the guild wanted to improve their image as it is currently a complex logo featuring many elements relating to John ruskin’s values of St. George’s courage in killing the dragon unarmoured as in Ruskin’s view he has right on his side.
Their existing values aren’t very visible in their current website or visual identity itself but they aimed to produce a contemporary rebrand of their identity to attract more members to join and become companions of the guild.
Above views their current values and below is what the guild aimed to achieve.
Comparators
Each of these organisations operate in overlapping but distinct areas of the arts and heritage sector. Each has its own focus, audience, and methods for engaging people. This is how it would look like on simple grid.
This grid maps the Guild of St George against the key comparators.
Since it’s re–brand, the William Morris Society has shifted towards a slightly more contemporary visual and public-facing identity. The Art Workers’ Guild also has historic roots but operates as a living network of practicing creatives.
Finally, the Hugo Burge Foundation sits further toward the contemporary and community-led space.
There is a clear gap for an Art–led contemporary organisation between the comparators so our aim is to move the charity from traditional and make the brand more balanced between being arts and community based whilst giving it a contemporary rebrand.
Comparator matrix of the lead Arts and crafts orginisation
Survey
We conducted a survey with the current companions of the Guild to understand how the current branding is perceived internally. We gathered 31 responses in total from both long–term members and some newer members.
From these responses we built up an image of how the brand is viewed. When asked if the name of the charity clearly communicated the brand’s values, we collected mixed responses.
38.7% of responses believed that the name did not, whilst 32.3% believed that it only somewhat represented the Guild’s values.
Current companions responded by saying “I had no idea whatsoever” and “People have asked why I’m involved in a nationalist group”. This highlighted a key problem for the current branding. Companions were also asked whether they believed that the name was relevant to the charity. 51.6% of responses argued that yes, it was relevant.
Therefore, for our design route, we agreed to keep the current name but to emphasise the values more effectively through our design.
Survey of companions from the guild
VISION
Making Britain a happier and fairer place to live, work and flourish
The branding workshop with Helen was useful in understanding how to incorporate brand personality to make the brand unique in itself and feel special for the client too. The archetypes of the brand personality wheel was something I haven’t come across before but through Carl Jung’s explanation.
MISSION
Putting Ruskin’s ideas into practice through culture, craft, and community, encouraging action and engagement with the world around us today.
Mind map of the guilds values
Visual identity
In understanding the primary objectives the guild wants to achieve, we produced initial sketches that reflect the arts and crafts, rural economy, education and action through St. George slaying the dragon.
Our client an other guild members has expressed the importance of St. George slaying the dragon as in his own words “Kill the dragon of unfettered industrial characters and kill the dragon of grotesque inequalities”. Therefore, we tried to include that element with their other values.
We used a combination of symbols to express their values in one visual identity. For example, the pen and the sword symbolises courage from St. George and craft through their art collection and ruskin’s beliefs.
Intial ideations
Initial ideations
These are developed ideas from our group’s sketches. We tried to combine values through the visual identity that reflected the three C’s: culture craft and community. These nouns express the heart of the charity and their purpose making it a stronger tagline than the current one.
Development
Developed ideas using the pen and sword expressing craft and courage of making the world a better place through good stewardship.
As our main typeface we went with Carilliantine, we explored other typefaces as well such as Buckridge regular and Aleo.
For the second route on the left we tried to explore people coming together like branches and creating a social change. We kept the strokes within the same width as the typeface to be cohesive all together as a indentity.
The third route explores the three values we wanted to combine which include craft (pen), nature and rural economies (leaf) and the hands symbolising community and people having shared beliefs.
These were strong routes we had but the first route was what grabbed our attention more due to the funky characteristics of the typeface Carlliantine and the ways we ca play with the features of it to even create a logomark through one letter G.
Two different routes expressing similar values but more about collaborating with people to create a change.
Finalised logo and preferred route
This is our initial route and something as a team we all decided to move on forward with to show the client as it features craft and courage through the pen and the sword which is part of John ruskin’s beliefs with fighting the inequalities of the world like St. Goerge did with killing the dragon. Therefore we included a illustration of a dragon to express the heritage of the guild and not lose that factor completely.
Digital applications
Website
This is how we apply the brand across the website. This would be the new homescreen with our three C’s tagline clearly showing the purpose of guild. My colleague Malak Ramadann was the one that took charge of part of the digital applications here. We can also see Ruskin's main quote "No wealth but life" with a brief explanation. Scrolling down the vision and mission of the guild are clearly stated for new members, with a call to action section for donations as it is a charity, with a section on upcoming events the guild offers, and finally ending the homescreen with the footer highlighting guild partners. We wanted to make it clear for users like jane our persona how she can become a companion, so we provided an obvious button with our active gold colour. Taking her to the joining page, which includes further information on why to join and the easy steps to join, while also providing quotes from current guild members to show their experiences and encourage new members to join.
If we compare them, the original is text heavy and hard to digest so we redesigned it to make it more approachable to new users and skimmable for users to understand and get the same information quicker, hoping that it encourages new memebers to join.
Social Media
Through social media I improved their digital presence by incorporating the rebranding we accustomed to the website in including the patterns to reflect nature and stewardship throughout the insta highlights in keeping a cohesive brand. In addition, I created posts that present four key areas that reflect the charity which includes, events, archive (ruskin spaces), companion highlights and quotes reflecting ruskin’s beliefs.
The LinkedIn page utilises the leaf pattern structure.
This was a template of the posts where information specifically the events would be structured in according to the grid. The logo placement would be in the left hand corner of posts that refer back to the website to get more information of events taking place and visiting places to go to such as the Ruskin Collection in the Millenium museum.
Email footer
This footer was specifically designed in request to the client to have a footer for companions to email so their charity is more professional and distinguished.
Merchandise and stationery
Letterheads and notebooks
Totebags were made to follow the personas of one of the students getting a notebook but for users to pickup and use with quotes that reflect being a better person as the charity are strongly about.
Revised visual identity
In revisiting the logo and getting client feedback according to the design of the visual identity, it was mentioned that the dragon was quite punchy and looks more intimidating for new users so we tried combining the dragon within the sword to still show the courage of the pen sword and the craft reflection as well.
