“Working with Soft Stuff Allowed me to Experiment Creatively – and Support a Cause Close to my Heart.”
Senior freelance designer and CIC volunteer Bethan Thomas sat down with us to discuss why impactful projects are so important to her, and reflect on her recent experience working with Soft Stuff: a charity that promotes creativity and open conversations around mental health for young black men.
Bethan Thomas, Senior Freelance Designer
When Bethan was first offered the opportunity to work on the brand identity for Soft Stuff – a charity promoting creativity and positive mental health for young black men – she immediately felt both creatively inspired and connected to the cause.
“THE PURPOSE OF THE GROUP RESONATES WITH ME SO MUCH – I’M A BIG ADVOCATE FOR CREATIVITY. I FEEL THAT EVERYONE IS CREATIVE IN SOME WAY. AND PERHAPS AS ADULTS, ESPECIALLY, WE DON’T HAVE THE OPPORTUNITIES TO EXPLORE THAT OR DISCOVER THAT.”
“I was briefed to create a brand toolkit, which would involve some brand concepts, then eventually creating a colour palette, typography, and applying that to some Instagram posts and a presentation,” she says. “It really needed to reflect the character of the collective. I think the beauty of it was that it needed to be really inspiring, and convey the sensitivity and emotion that can be found in young black men.”
As a senior freelance designer, as well as a former Peckham local and dedicated volunteer for the Creative Impact Club, the brief hit all the right notes for her skillset, interests and experience.
Before going freelance five years ago, Bethan was an in-house designer at a trends and innovation company. Her interest in brand design was piqued when she was part of a team tasked with working on an intensive rebrand for a legacy project, which involved developing brand values and creating a new brand identity from start to finish.
From there, she’s taken on several impact projects as a volunteer with Creative Impact Club, such as working with the Wateraware Collective – a young start-up striving to clean up the UK’s waterways, where Bethan was involved in creating its brand identity and toolkit.
“As the time has gone by and I've got more projects under my belt, and more experience, I’ve definitely felt like I wanted to carve out more of a path with working with clients that are doing some good in the world,” says Bethan.
Bethan also volunteered to work with the Peckham Business Forum. Having lived in Peckham before and with her own fondness for South London, she knew exactly what the project’s brand identity needed creatively to thrive.
“Because I'd lived in the area before and have such a love of it, I knew the sort of character we wanted to bring forward with the identity,” says Bethan. “But it was meeting the business people down Rye Lane that really sparked my inspiration again for this. It had to be bright, bold, colourful and strong, and with a strong voice, but it needed positivity running through it as well.”
With growth being inevitable for an area like Peckham, as it continues to undergo so much rapid change, Bethan decided to frame the work with the mindset that this change would be positive: “that’s really what we wanted to come through with the identity, and I think we achieved that for sure.”
The experience inspired her to continue volunteering with the Creative Impact Club, and she expresses a strong desire to maintain the range of impact projects she contributes to.
“I really like the challenge of getting to know a brand and what their character is, and what space they're working in,” says Bethan. “It keeps my job interesting; I'm continually learning about new sectors, areas, products and research.”
Joining the Creative Impact Club has given Bethan the opportunity to explore different brand identities through connection and collaboration – which made her a first choice to create a brand toolkit for Soft Stuff. While the initiative already had some online presence, such as an Instagram account and a logo, Bethan’s mission was to create an extensive brand toolkit. Soft Stuff was keen to have tools that were workable, usable and flexible, to create engaging online content, particularly for social media, that truly spoke to their work and reflected the character of the collective.
“Working with Soft Stuff allowed me to experiment creatively – and support a cause close to my heart,” says Bethan. “It's not often that I would get an opportunity to work with a group such as this, partly because such small groups or peer-led groups wouldn’t always have a budget for a full brand identity or even working with the design area in general – so to have that working relationship and that platform is a really brilliant opportunity.”
Bethan recreated the logo to find the right feel for the brand, feeling that the original “wasn’t quite the right fit”. While the concept for it was “really strong”, the existing bubble typography didn’t feel instinctively strong enough. Bethan’s design work involved adding edges and angles, elevating the brand in a way that more closely aligned with the story Soft Stuff wanted to tell.
“Theo was a really great client. He was very open-minded, open to seeing new ideas and to pushing the brand,” said Bethan. “Being involved with the process as well – I really like to involve clients in my thinking all the way through and explain my decisionmaking, showing and explaining visuals to explain the concept, and he was really on board with all the ideas.”
Bethan particularly excelled in distilling information from comprehensive conversations with Theo, taking the details and flipping ideas into a tangible concept, with visuals and decisionmaking justifications to make the best of a new branding approach.
“The purpose of the group resonates with me so much – I'm a big advocate for creativity,” says Bethan. “I feel that everyone is creative in some way. And perhaps as adults, especially, we don’t have the opportunities to explore that or discover that as a much as we should.”
Bethan is a freelance senior designer specialising in brand identity, image creation and editorial design - aiming to work with clients who are doing good in the world, and who value creativity.
Website: https://bethanthomas.co.uk
Instagram: @bethansnaps