His Majesty’s government website has a new brand identity. Here’s why.
Plus: “Zohran for New York City” and a new era of progressive political design
His Majesty’s government website has a new brand identity. Here’s why.
Visitors to the United Kingdom’s official government website this week were welcomed by a small, colorful change to the site’s header. The period between gov and UK in the official logo is now a floating turquoise dot, part of an effort to make the site more appealing, per government documents. What used to be a web address is now a brand. Or at least that’s the hope. If it works, it could show the power of design to help governments better deliver for their citizens.
Government Digital Service, or GDS, is the U.K. government’s digital technology unit, and in a blog post Wednesday, they announced the new logo would be appearing on official government sites alongside the old, previous logo while everything was still being updated. The GDS also said the redesigned site would make greater use of the color blue as well as introduce animation in the site’s identity.
It’s hard enough as it is to keep everyone happy during a typical brand refresh, but civic rebrands can be among the hardest of all since it entails two things people take very seriously, their identities and their tax dollars. In the U.K., a simple dot has inspired blowback on the right, with the Daily Mail calling the site redesign a “‘vanity’ makeover,” while talk radio station LBC reported that the head of the right-wing party Reform UK called it a joke that showed “disrespect for taxpayers' money.”
A work in progress
These are just the latest updates to the website. In 2021, GDS increased the space between links and enlarged the site’s touch targets, or the spaces users tap to follow a link, to make the site easier to navigate. In 2023, other changes were made to make the site more mobile friendly. They also changed the logo last February without causing controversy. A previous version of the logo showed an icon of the St. Edward’s Crown for the late Queen Elizabeth, and it’s since been updated to the Tudor Crown for King Charles. Like the U.S. adding a star to its flag for a new state, this was a redesign baked into a country’s very form of government, its head of state, and no one batted an eye.
For the new turquoise dot, though, it’s the price tag that has some fuming. The development, design, and delivery of brand refresh assets cost as much £150,000 (about $205,000), plus as much as £350,000 (about $478,000) was spent to develop channel guidelines and best practices, according to government contract information.
Ironically, given the backlash over the site redesign from some on the right, the contracts were awarded during a Conservative government and they went to M&C Saatchi, a global ad agency descended from the agency that helped sweep Conservative Margaret Thatcher into power in 1979 with “Labour Isn’t Working,” the most famous ad in U.K. politics, the British “Daisy Girl.” This wasn’t a redesign prompted by the new Labour government.
The broadest possible audience
While the costs may seem pricey — particularly if you believe all it paid for was a turquoise dot — GDS has high expectations about what they’re paying for. This is a project for building trust in government and encouraging more citizens to use the site. Gov.UK bills itself as “the best place to find government services and information” and it has links for government services, benefits, and information on everything from “Births, deaths, marriages, and care” to “Working, jobs, and pensions.”
According to the contracts, the goal of the brand refresh is to increase the site’s appeal “to the broadest possible audience,” ranging from non-users who have low levels of trust in the government to existing users they hope will sign up for and use new site features and eventually become advocates. It has more abstract asks, like to “increase the tonal range and flexibility of the brand so it can operate across more contexts,” as well as hinting at work for “new channels and services” that weren’t detailed in a redacted document but suggest that this is more than just a website. Perhaps a turquoise dot can deliver?
To the casual observer, the gov.UK brand refresh looks simple, just a color change and moving a circle. I can do that, one might think, and you can. But this is about more than just a turquoise dot, as the contracts make clear. The dot is just the most visible outward sign of a larger project, and if designers can meet government benchmarks, they can better prove the expense is worth it. This is a redesign about building trust in government by making “the best place to find government services and information” even better.
Previously in Yello:
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