We’ve been supporters and allies of The Trevor Project for years and watched them grow from a small non-profit to the world’s largest organization helping LGBTQ young people in crisis. So it was a special honor to partner with them to reimagine their brand, design system, and digital tools to grow their impact and widen their reach. See how our brand experts and technologists worked to empower a life-saving team.
The team at Kettle understood that this project was about so much more than cosmetic updates. Our brand refresh provides the foundation for a new chapter that will allow us to connect with even more LGBTQ young people who need us. It was such a positive experience working with a creative partner that internalized our mission and let it inform everything they created.
Our work started at The Trevor Project’s roots, learning the history of the nonprofit, conducting interviews, and gaining an inside perspective of its mission and evolution. In collaboration with their team, we spent months running focus groups and audience surveys. What emerged from this collective effort was a new strategic foundation — the core pillars of a new brand DNA, and our North Star for the work that followed.
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We built on the brand foundation to design a look and feel as bold as the mission and as vibrant as the community it serves. From the calming textures to its welcoming new voice, we helped The Trevor Project create a brand book to guide their organization, and set a definitive tone for the future.
User-testing and research from within the community informed and validated all of our creative choices across all channels, from the gradients we used to the fonts we chose.
We wanted to pay homage to The Trevor Project’s iconic orange, but also modernize the unique color for its digital presence. By working with a larger color palette and using gradients to simulate a soothing effect, we were able to infuse the brand with a new, younger energy that conveys a sense of optimism and hope.
Our goal for the logo was twofold. To appeal to The Trevor Project’s young LGBTQ audience. And to convey the organization’s leadership in education, allyship, and policy change. We used a striking sans serif type to make The Trevor Project feel both powerful and approachable to our younger audience.
We evolved the original logo’s star to inject the feeling of hope. The new symbol points forward and up, like a compass, to represent the strength of LGBTQ young people as they navigate difficult emotions and circumstances.
Bringing The Trevor Project brand to life was a true community effort. We partnered with queer Chicanx photographer Devyn Galindo to capture our audience and weave their voices and perspectives throughout the brand creative. We also commissioned original illustrations from queer Guatemalan-Slovak artist and illustrator Ludi Leva, whose modern style and bright tones brought a youthful edge and energy to the brand refresh.
Working with The Trevor Project has been such a beautiful experience. It wasn’t long ago that I was a baby queer stuck in Texas — in need of someone to talk to. Coming home to yourself is an ongoing journey, and I’m just happy that The Trevor Project exists to help guide queer youth on their way.
I was both challenged and honored to contribute to the storytelling and am very eager to see how this new visual identity can help The Trevor Project better connect with, serve, and uplift the LGBTQ community.
The new website needed to accomplish many things. It needed to create trust, be mobile-first, and make help more accessible for a variety of audience types.
A fully streamlined user experience and information architecture helps audiences navigate information intuitively. With two clear pathways, LGBTQ young people can easily access life-saving services, and parents, prospective volunteers, donors, or professionals can discover the resources they need to support them.
After testing various features of the website, we realized young people in crisis need to feel safe, particularly when they are in households that are unaccepting. This led us to refine and test things like the “Quick Exit” tool, which allows them to leave the site and erase their browser history with a custom shortcut.