MidCoast Council

The MidCoast is a large and diverse region of 195 towns, villages and localities with two main population centres of Taree and Forster-Tuncurry. It covers a diverse landscape from beaches to mountains over an area of 10,000 square kilometres and is home to approximately 93,800 people living in around 40,000 households.

MidCoast Council was formed by NSW Government proclamation in May 2016, through the merger of the former Great Lakes, Greater Taree and Gloucester Shire Council and MidCoast Water. A MidCoast Council brand was developed from this amalgamation with community consultation, but was never fully realised or expressed to the community.

With a growing Marketing and Engagement team, and a need to communicate across various platforms consistently, Headjam were engaged by MidCoast Council to review the existing Corporate brand and develop a future proofed solution that was user friendly and encouraged consistency across the large organisation.

Create a modern, future-proof brand that supports consistent and professional brand delivery.

The role of the council is to deliver services to their local community. Residents are the primary target audience as well as users of the brand and brand assets.

Championing our communities from the mountains to the sea.

The guidelines and templates help me do my job efficiently.

With an embedded logo that had previously been through community consultation, we were tasked to develop a creative solution that kept the core logo untouched. Our goal was to simplify, modernise, and allow scope to celebrate the uniqueness of the region.

We met the brief through subtle colour palette tweaks that brought in more vibrancy and considered brand appearance across digital platforms. We modernised brand fonts whilst remaining sympathetic to the heritage logo font. Inspired by the scribbly lines of the original brand rollout, we introduced loose and hand-drawn illustration assets to provide flexibility to the team when suitable images were not available. Tone of voice was also considered as an essential part of rebuilding the narrative of why the council exists – it needed to demonstrate a passion for making a positive difference to the community. This was delivered through some user friendly writing guidelines that included practical examples. A website design was also developed with user needs at its core – expressed through a large search bar, and large hero image spaces to celebrate the beauty of the region.

In response to the need for consistency across such a large organisation, a brand management system was introduced to aid the in-house marketing team in their brand custodian role. A tiered approach to design templates was delivered with solutions like Canva, branded Word, and PowerPoint templates and InDesign files to manage the various levels of design and brand knowledge across the organisation. A digital brand guideline was also delivered to aid in the sharing of consistent files internally as well as to suppliers and community partners.

Rolling out a corporate brand across large organisations has its challenges, with multiple levels of stakeholder management and endorsement required. Anecdotally, the updated design templates have been received with great success, with particular note on the breadth of asset delivery through illustrations.

Further to this we have been engaged to work on Council-owned assets including the brand refresh for the Manning Entertainment Centre. We look forward to our continuing collaboration with the MidCoast team.