Collins Reimagines Girl Scouts of the USA With New Brand System, Customized Typeface

Aug. 31, 2022

Juliette Gordon Low has an idea: prepare girls to meet the world with "courage, confidence and character." She brings together a small group of young women, effectively founding one of the largest, most vital organizations for girls. One with a presence in every corner of the United States, today.

1.7 million girls. 50 million alumnae.

For over one hundred years, Girls Scouts have played an active role in every cultural milestone of American history. From women’s suffrage to civil rights, they’ve been there. Pioneering female leadership in every discipline. Encouraging girls to act on their dreams and change the world for the better.

And, with over 112 independent councils designing communications, the movement’s design approach needed a cohesive point of view.

So, the Girl Scouts invited Collins to work with them to craft just that. Beginning together in 2019, Collins sought to clarify the brand as an unignorable and hopeful cultural force.

• Reaffirming its relevance in the lives of young women.
• Reasserting the Girl Scout identity as a clear emblem of their mission.
• Reorienting the movement’s legacy to fuel the future.

SOLUTION:

Collins started with a question: what does "preparing girls to meet the world with courage, confidence and character" mean today?

Team recognized the importance of championing all girls’ ambitions—work that the Girl Scouts has been doing for over 100 years. They've provided girls with the support to act on their aims and savor their accomplishments.

Together with their remarkable team, Collins worked to define a clear brand platform centered on being a champion of girls' ambition and sought to bring that idea to life through every expression of the brand.

Starting with their symbol.

The Girl Scouts movement has been represented by the Trefoil since its inception. It has seen many iterations, ranging from the American Eagle to girls’ silhouettes. The Trefoil, now simplified, embodies its most potent, iconic essence.

Beyond the logo, a new brand system needed to address the reality of having dozens of energetic councils designing communications for the same brand. The councils needed tools that would provide coherence across the country and offer flexibility to support their different communities. They were inspired by the visuality and history of Girl Scout patches and badges. These are artifacts of achievement that girls proudly wear to tell their own story; their goals, their accomplishments, their interests, their identities. Agency translated these objects into bold, geometric forms that could be used as building blocks for design and interactivity. The system grants a common language to all communications and is flexible enough to support any application, whether it be a presentation template or a vibrant campaign.

Collins developed a voice that looks girls in the eye, recognizes everything they are and can do, and seeks to empower them to blaze the trails only they can. To support that voice, they also worked with the Girl Scouts creative team and Positype to commission a distinct custom typeface.

In addition to the strategic, visual and verbal identity, they were asked to define how these tools extend into apparel and merchandise. How might they reinforce the relevance of this brand through gear that girls are excited to wear? By resurfacing archived styles with a contemporary take, the Girl Scouts can look to their original, beautiful catalogs for a wellspring of design inspiration.

And the Trefoil, while rooted in green, can now selectively expand beyond green-only applications. So the Girl Scouts and their mission can come to life in multicolor—and with an expressiveness that reflects the vibrancy of the world around us.

To that end, agency invited a diverse group of women artists and designers (both emerging voices as well as celebrated masters) to create a series of posters that express their experience of Girl Scouts. The series includes new talent like Cyra Cupid (RISD, 2021) and Jingqi Fan (Washington University, 2020) as well as, among others, AIGA Medalists Gail Anderson, Karin Fong, Debbie Millman, Noreen Morioka and Cheryl Miller (whose work as a designer began as a Girl Scout.)

This new brand system looks back at its legacy only to point forward and reassert what the movement has always been:

• Formative in girls’ lives.
• As it was in 1912.
• As it is today and tomorrow.