AIYD Brand – A bold vision
The Australia India Youth Dialogue (AIYD) is a path-breaking initiative that has added a whole new dimension to the Australia-India relationship. Since its first annual conference in 2012 in India, the AIYD has been bringing together emerging young leaders from both countries every year. Through its annual conferences and other initiaties, it has paved the way for lasting friendships, creative partnerships and overall greater mutual understanding between the two countries at the youth level.
Five years since it was launched, the AIYD has grown strength to strength. As a brand, it has established an excellent reputation as the foremost platform for youth engagement and collaboration between Australia and India, and is highly recognisable amongst relevant political and social networks in both countries.The AIYD Steering Committee felt the time was opportune to re-look at its branding via the launch of a new website, in order to reflect better this evolution of AIYD over these past five years.
As we began the re-branding exercise, the team at AIYD remained conscious that the process had to be true to what AIYD stands for. We started from AIYD’s core values and vision, to how these values and vision have been translated into practical ideas and tools of engagement.
The team had two clear goals here:
1. To re-brand the main identity, standardise the brand from hygiene angle with a brand language that is trickled down across formats of the brand and across channels where the brand communicates/ interacts, and
2. To create a consistent design language for the brand that can be recognisable by its audience and memorable for its stakeholders, but also have creative extensions to the design language that bring freshness in every medium and channel.
The AIYD engages stakeholder from diverse sectors, and we felt the re-branding had to reflect a minimal, formal look and feel. Yet have the flexibility of a creative language that showcases the vibrant relationship between India and Australia. The two main colour bands have been taken from respective country flags and a design language has been created around the idea of dialogue. The dialogue box tessellates to form creative patterns and designs that are extended across mediums. The consistent and creative design language has been translated to our new website design, the alumni portal and mobile application (both launching in October 2016). The designs will be eventually extended to our sixth dialogue in Australia on 16-18 February, 2017. Shaun Star, current Chair of the Steering Committee was excited to share his view on the brand design experience, “At its core, AIYD is an organisation that brings young leaders from Australia and India together to build stronger and deeper ties between our nations. With design elements inspired by our core values, our new brand language represents our vision to encourage engagement between young leaders from both countries. It is our hope they are new website will be more user friendly, informative and inspire more youth from Australia and India to get involved in our growing community”.
We are excited to see how this new brand language engages our stakeholders and brings consistency to our outreach efforts. The aim is to integrate our key content and streamline processes that connect all internal departments of the dialogue seamlessly, fortifying the foundation of this dynamic platform.
At the core of the AIYD brand is the concept of ‘youth dialogue’, which seems more relevant now than ever when opinions and conversations are so often polarised and leave little room for empathy, collaboration and equitable dialogue. As a sustainable platform for youth engagement, the AIYD hopes to encourage and practice the culture of pluralistic dialogue that helps build sustainable and equitable relationships in the Australia-India relationship, and also in the broader global context.
We believe that beyond the potential for fostering strong friendships and collaborations,young leaders in Australia and India also share these core values and wish to work together towards the larger goal of a multi-cultural society that is locally rooted but globally connected. The AIYD community at the heart of this vision will continue to re-iterate its brand core and continue to build this vibrant relationship between India and Australia through its annual conferences and other initiatives.
– Achyutha Sharma, Member, Steering Committee
