Police Athletic League
Creating brand consistency and standardizing usage for a New York City icon
CASTING A DESIGNER’S EYE OVER A HIGHLY RECOGNIZABLE BRAND
Most people in the New York City Metro area recognize the Police Athletic League (PAL) name and brand. On closer examination, our client, Director of Advancement, H. Aldervan Daly, realized that “the brand had not had any attention paid to it for many years. On one level that made sense, we have an iconic PAL shield that represented the organization. The problem was once you got past the PAL Shield and looked at its actual use it became clear that everyone used the shield differently. Beyond the shield, there were multiple versions of the official letterhead, business card, and other stationery.” That’s when PAL turned to Go Gladys.
CHANGING ALMOST EVERYTHING BUT REMAINING TRUE TO THE ORIGINAL BRAND
H. Aldervan Daly described the relationship between PAL and our company, “Over the last two years, I have come to depend on Eve and her amazing staff for branding, marketing, and graphics work. Go Gladys worked with us to build new collateral and an expanded version of the shield – one that included the organizations’ full name and motto. We then created stationery for all 20 of PAL’s centers. Each center got its own letterhead, fax and memo stationery. We also completely redesigned the business card.”
KEEPING EVERYONE HONEST WITH TWO VERSIONS OF A BRANDING GUIDE
To make sure that center employees and headquarters staff understood how to use the new materials Ashworth created two versions of the branding guide. One for centers and one for the headquarters. Aldervan Daly said “Ashworth was incredibly disciplined in helping us to get approvals and buy-in on the materials. The branding guides were designed to be living documents so that as PAL continues to grow its projects and designs new logo treatments, they can be incorporated.” Each guide contained specific usage instructions for the shield and logo versions in color, black & white, for stationery and on clothing.
ENSURING THAT 20 DIFFERENT LOCATIONS EXECUTED THE SAME BRAND STANDARDS
Go Gladys was able to bring order to the multiple centers that PAL operates for children throughout the city. Each center was given a templated one-sheet flyer design that outlines their programs, locations and directions. The visual approach carried the green PAL logo through into a range of brochures that were printed in the thousands for distribution at public and fundraising events.
STANDING OUT IN A CROWDED CITY
Along with the major refinement of the brand, Go Gladys was engaged to create a wide variety of materials including event pop-up banners, outcomes infographics that were used widely on the PAL website, on one sheets and brochures. With so many materials, Aldervan Daly describes our necessary obsession with process: “Ashworth was incredibly disciplined in helping us to put get approvals and buy-in on the materials.” The cleaner branding helped every item have a greater impact and stand out from the crowd and subsidiary brands, such as the PAL Girl Talk program, which was brought in line with refreshed graphics.
ENVIRONMENTAL GRAPHICS FOR ROSE HALL AT PAL’S HARLEM CENTER
Thanks to a $1.1 million “Garden of Dreams” renovation grant from Madison Square Garden PAL was able to restore and revitalize their Harlem Center and its 2-story atrium Rose Hall. We created environmental graphics to dominate and cheer up the space. Bright and inviting graphics that were an exploration of the branding theme were used on the walls between the floors, along with hanging banners. We’re very happy to work with PAL and Aldervan Daly reciprocates that sentiment: “Go Gladys is an invaluable partner with PAL in all of our Branding, Marketing, and Graphic needs.”
