MAUD

Rare with Google exists to promote diversity and inclusion in the creative industries. After a successful launch as a three-day masterclass supported by D&AD and sponsored by Google, with events in London, Sydney, Auckland and Tokyo, Rare with Google expanded from Masterclasses to include Creative Campus, a creative industries student learning program, and Creative Fellowship, one year in residence at Google’s creative teams.

We needed to bring the visual identity into a distinctively Google visual style, finding a design solution that married the concept of punk, protest and grassroots movements with arguably the largest brand in the world — Google.

To find ways to make the Rare identity distinctive and ownable, we delved into the Google brand, embracing and subverting some of its key elements in equal measure. We played with the Google colour palette to wash the design with one of the 20 possible colours within the Google range, which was then overprinted with black messaging and imagery – a nod to grassroots photocopying and communications.

We embraced Google Sans and Roboto (Google’s primary typefaces), using both for screen and print, and updated the iconography to represent diversity, progress and inclusion from a global perspective.

To ensure the communications still appealed to the creative community while aligning with Google’s visual identity, we gave the program a sense of utility, to feel like a creative manual that people can easily use, read and interact with.

Rare with Google events are now running cross Sydney, London, Auckland, Cannes, Tokyo and New York, and despite the COVID disruption, it went ahead with digitally delivered content for its fourth year’s masterclasses, with interviews and keynotes produced and delivered remotely in association with Semi Permanent.