Designer
Sarah Price
Art Director
Paul Bailes
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Client
United Grand Lodge England
Freemasons
Date
March 2021
Deliverables
Print Design
Digital Design
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Brief
The United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE) is the governing body for the membership organisation for the Freemasons which has over 200,000 members across the globe. Steeped in history, Freemasons are one of the oldest social and charitable organisations, empowering members to be the very best. In order to remain relevant and survive in the 21st Century, UGLE is looking to modernise itself and to become better understood in the wider community to secure its on-going success and long-term future. As part of its journey to modernisation, they have looked at their staff recruitment and onboarding process. They identified that they wanted to have a “Staff Pack” to act as a reference point for new staff which would allow them to better understand the organisation, its aims and its rich history. The client made the decision that the Staff Pack would be distributed in traditional hard copy format.
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Design
With an organisation so steeped in tradition, it was important to strike a balance between respecting its history and the desire to modernise and appeal to
a younger workforce whilst clearly signposting and explaining the organisational structure. UGLE already had brand guidelines with specified fonts and colour palette which needed to be taken into account. Following discussion with the client, they opted to retain a traditional A4 format and whilst mid-project it became apparent that they would not print due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, the final output could be moved to PDF format with no adverse effect or increase in costs. UGLE has a rich library of images and is home to some wonderful artefacts but the main purpose of the Staff Pack was to document the public face of the organisation and the amazing charity work that they do. The Staff Pack therefore features a lot of reportage images supplied by members across the globe.
Create
Looking at the content, we agreed a logical flow with the client to ‘tell’ the UGLE story by focusing initially on the history and heritage through the creation of a timeline of key dates running across the bottom of the page using simple icons and a very short description. Larger feature photography of key artefacts/images of Freemasons Hall injects the sense of grandeur and history associated with UGLE. The Staff Pack then moves naturally on to key information about the organisation: what it does, the benefits and values of working for UGLE since the main function
of the document is that is it be part of the HR onboarding process. The final part of the Staff Pack focuses on how the Freemasons are structured across the globe and features details on the make up of key committees and post holders. There are also short case studies on their work in raising millions of pounds which are distributed among local communities and case studies from Freemasons themselves explaining why they are so passionate about the organisation and its aims. The mix of organisational structural information coupled with personal insights and images engages the reader and allows them to better understand, engage and demystify what is often seen as a secretive organisation.
Outcome
Whilst the final document was not commercially printed due to the pandemic, the format meant electronic distribution was easily achieved and the document could be retained on the UGLE Intranet for easy access. As the first step in a modernisation exercise, the Staff Pack has been well received and has lead to another project to create a visual representation of the Core Values of UGLE based on the simple icons used in the Staff Pack.
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UGLE digital staff pack
Please take a flick through the pages of the digital staff pack.
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Core value icons
Building on from the success of the welcome pack, we were engaged to create a suite of icons to represents the 4 core values of Freemasonry. Choosing the same illustrative style from the handbook these were designed and then animated to further engage their audience across their intranet. Click here for further details.
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“This was the first time UGLE had looked to create a document to assist with the on-boarding of new staff. It was also the first time we had worked with Cohesion; we were pleased with the approach and attention to detail they showed to ensure that we were happy with the result. They were extremely patient and accommodated our requests without issue whilst checking where appropriate and offering suggestions to improve the result. Our CEO was extremely pleased with the final outcome and said it looked absolutely brilliant.”
George Clarke
Project Lead, UGLE