Need’s suffragette-inspired identity for Rise tells an energetic story of community and support

Founded in 2019 by Helen Russell, Scottish social enterprise Rise was established to help empower, tutor and support refugee women in overcoming employment barriers. Providing not only hospitality employment and hands-on skills but also CV writing and hygiene qualifications, Rise is an ecstatic, optimistic and active community, and required an identity that is equally as energetic, warm and charismatic to further uplight their public perception. Developing Rise’s identity, tone of voice, website and digital assets, strategic design practice Need collaborated closely with Russell, taking inspiration from activist movements in the process; the suffragettes in particular. This idea manifests in the identity’s poignant and unapologetic aesthetic; which is executed with an elementary, enlivening and playful graphic language, and paired simply with similarly striking colours. Alongside Rasmus Andersson’s Inter, Need opted for Kostić Type Foundry’s Mongoose as the hero typeface, embracing its super-condensed form to bolster their aesthetic reference to protest graphics. “It’s strong and ideal for high impact messages and power words,” Need’s Creative Director Ed Watt tells us. “It was also important that it was sharp and contemporary,” he adds, “not a remake or direct pastiche.”