Vale of Glamorgan Council – Placemaking

BrandingDigitalGraphic Design & PrintSocial Media Content

Background and brief

In May 2023, the Vale of Glamorgan Council became a signatory of the Placemaking Wales Charter and is now eligible to apply for Welsh Government funding to prepare Placemaking Plans for each town in the Vale: Barry, Cowbridge, Llantwit Major and Penarth.

To support the Council’s efforts in engaging communities with its placemaking activity, jamjar was commissioned to create:

An ‘umbrella brand’ to use to talk about placemaking on a whole county basis
Four ‘sub brands’ for each of the Vale’s four towns for stakeholders to use on a more localised basis
A suite of communication assets, including copy and application templates, for partners to use in engagement activity moving forward.

The Council were keen for the visual identity of the brands to echo the visual identity of the Vale Town Centres campaign to ensure consistency.

What we did

Having worked with the Council for a number of years on its Vale Town Centres campaign and with our office based in the heart of the Vale of Glamorgan, we already had a good understanding of the Vale’s four towns and what makes them unique. Despite this, we wanted to drill into placemaking and find out more about what it is and what success looks like. We quizzed the team at the council and did our own research into placemaking which uncovered that for placemaking to be a success, the whole community must be engaged.

We used these findings to shape our overarching concept and call to action:

Concept:
Your Place, Your Say |
Eich Tref, Eich Dweud

Call to Action:
Have your say in shaping [town]’s future |
Dweud eich dweud wrth siapio dyfodol [tref].

A visual identity was developed for the umbrella brand, which included a logo, colour palette, font and visual devices which could be tailored for each of the four towns and applied across all communication assets.