AMIGOS is an international nonprofit facilitating cross-cultural exchange for youth across the Americas. For five decades it had been the leader in its field, providing young people with immersive volunteer experiences in Latin America. Unfortunately by 2015, AMIGOS was becoming "the best kept secret". Despite the 26K alumni, the organization was struggling with its recruitment and fundraising. It needed a new brand to distinguish itself in what had become a crowded sector. 

To truly understand the value of AMIGOS and the excellence of its offering, the project began with listening to participants from the past and present.  Dozens of interviews helped us identify the organization's strengths: high quality programs; respect for the all participants and hosts; and extreme enthusiasm for the experience. This was the first step toward designing a new brand. 

I believe that it is crucial to build a strategic foundation before creating a brand. Brand pillars, promise, and positioning guide the team throughout each stage of the design process, ensuring that every piece created connects back to that core essence of the brand. This foundation also helps the client team evaluate the visual and written outputs of the brand process, as they are presented. 

AMIGOS needed to find a voice to effectively reach its distinct audience segments. I developed audience profiles to organize and prioritize the emotional needs of the three primary audience segments – alumni, potential participants, and parents. Combining these audience profiles with the brand pillars, I created a voice and tone for the organization. This gave rise to new brand messaging and messaging guidelines that ensured AMIGOS would be communicating with a strong, unified voice. 

The brand foundation gave rise to the visual concept, Wanderlust . 

Wanderlust – an irresistible desire to travel and understand one's own existence. 

This visual direction was heavily photographic, showcasing the excitement with beautiful landscapes and colorful culture of Latin America. The strong photographic style brought a distinct photo-journalistic quality to the brand assets and captured the life-defining experience of the teenage participants. 

I supported with the team of designers with strong storytelling for the Wanderlust theme. My copywriting helped our client see the future of their organization from the visual direction in our captivating design presentations. It was then applied to tell the world about this outstanding program.

We rolled out the new brand across print and digital platforms. As lead strategist I served as  project manager and client partner during the digital design and development. We designed tools to help launch the brand internally. These included messaging and visual style guides that would ensure uniformed applications across the federated organization. We also created a promotional video, for which I wrote the script and created the storyboard.

This work was a success in large part due to the wonderful team at AMIGOS. It was a pleasure to get to know and collaborate with this dedicated and passionate organization.