The brief

The Canadian National Institute for the Blind has been supporting the visually impaired community for over a hundred years. Their mission is to empower people with sight loss to live the lives they choose. And to do that, they focus on bridging the gap between the sighted and visually impaired communities with community hubs in major Canadian cities.

The brand is focused on true inclusivity. So when it came time to rebrand, they wanted to ensure their identity was as inclusive as they always strive to be.

The creative idea

Don’t create a more inclusive visual identity. Don’t create a visual identity at all.

Create a brand identity that’s not designed to be seen.

We created the first tactile brand identity – a texture placed on signage, posters, brand collateral, giveaways and more that tells the story of the CNIB with touch.

And it wasn’t designed for the visually impaired community. It was designed by them at the CNIB Community Hub in Toronto.

We conducted a co-creation session with members of both the sighted and visually impaired communities to explore how the CNIB feels to them and what texture could represent the brand’s mission.

They told us that the CNIB helps them overcome the thousands of daily challenges of sight loss – helping create order from the chaos of those daily struggles. We explored different textures and materials to capture that feeling. Together with the community, we designed a tactile brand to tell that story. The result is a pattern that can be replicated at any scale – thousands of small rough shapes that, as you run your fingers across them, become more orderly and harmonized. It reflects how the CNIB turns stumbling blocks into stepping stones.

To bring it to life, we pioneered a new use for raised-polymer printing. Originally designed to produce braille, we tweak the technology to become a type of 3d printer that could build the new tactile identity on brand artifacts – from handrails that guide the visually impaired into the community hubs, to posters, phone cases, business cards and more. 

They tell the story of the CNIB. But what’s even more meaningful is that whether you’re blind, visually impaired, or sighted, you feel the story just the same. It’s not a more inclusive identity; it’s an inclusive identity.

The reception

We launched the new identity at the Community Hub in Toronto to tremendous positivity and excitement from community members, staff, executives and the general public. What was most touching was seeing how attendees with visually impairment discovered the texture. Touching it, they were surprised, intrigued, curious, and then moved. It captured a feeling that was so personal to them, and many told us they were quite proud it was made by the community itself.

Today, the new tactile brand identity has moved from innovative pilot project to become a brand standard. It’s currently being deployed across the CNIB’s Community Hubs nationwide. It’s impact you can feel.