2 Organizations
Suits to Careers is the embodiment of two organizations, Dress for Success, and Tied to Success. Dress for Success helps women; Tied To Success helps men. Both assist their clients in achieving their career goals through skills development and interview preparation.
Dress for Success established a Harrisburg branch to help women who have been out of the work force for some time find employment. The program was a huge success and later begun offering additional services beyond the original scope. Men began requesting to sign up for certificate and preperation courses in volumn. However Dress for Success does not service men. Tied to Success was established in response and offered the same range of services as Dress for Success.
Both non-profits operated independently for sometime. However managing two organizations independently was chaotic. In 2015 an umbrella non-profit was established called Suits to Careers. Dress for Success and Tied to Success would become child non-profits of Suits to Careers.
The Mission
Help young aspiring students and disadvantaged citizens enter the workforce and achieve economic independence. Suits to Careers provides a network of suiting, technical courses, and career guidance to assist their clients in accomplishing their mission.
Low Quality Concepts
The core design needed to incorporate the mission for Dress For Success and Tied To Success. Low quality concepts were produced to help the team visualize the potential.
Chosen Few
The Tie concept with various shapes were clear winners. In particular, the team liked the idea of the Tie wedging into a shape. Both the triangle and box almost look like the top part of a formal suit or dress.
Improving the Chosen
Men and women both understand the concept of a suit and dress. Usually, it's represented in the shape of a V with a visible tie, bow, and undershirt. Women typically don't wear a tie, but they do wear the rest. Thus, the new logo was a Suit and Tie.
The logo does appear to be slightly more masculine, but the standard Suit and Tie appear to be mostly gender neutral. The turn out at several sales and drives were still huge successes following the role out. When inquiring about the logo and interpretation, there was definitely a lean toward masculine perception. However, it was a light lean and not enough to scare off female cliental. The message was clear and matched the brand name.
Challenges
The most significant challenge was communicating the need to keep the design simple. There were complicated concepts being tossed around the marketing department. One feature the earth as the background with a main and women wearing suits in front of it. Great for being descriptive, but hard to intrepret at a glance and remember.
Overcoming this issue required speaking up and gathering research data to support the need to keep the logo simple. This included sharing designs with current clients and demonstrating their ability to quickly identify the brand.
