From the new book: The Visitor Center exhibition (created by C&G Partners of New York City, working in tandem with Nemours staff) interweaves major moments in Alfred’s life with a timeline of contemporary world events– context that may inspire visitors to consider ways in which they too can contribute to life in their own communities.

NFF approached C&G Partners with the need to clarify the value they bring to nonprofits and help audiences understand how to reap the full benefits of NFF’s lending program and financial tools so that organizations can focus on realizing their mission and serving their communities. In response, CGP moved NFF away from its dark blue and mustard green logo, consisting of three lowercase initials, toward the use of the full name accompanied by a new symbol and evolved tagline that express the interdependence between money and mission.

“The new look and feel of the brand is a rite of passage for an organization: a fundamental strategic investment in identity, consensus and communication,” said NFF President & CEO, Clara Miller. “Our process with C&G Partners engaged a range of voices in defining the right vocabulary, distilling many points of view toward an essential value proposition, aligning these pieces, and expressing them in color, motif, and words.”

To design the new logo, CGP addressed several key communication challenges, the primary one resolving the seemingly contradictory relationship between “nonprofit,” “finance” and “fund.” Partner Steff Geissbuhler responded to this set of dualities through a reconfigured name that alters the emphasis of the words, accompanied by a symbol that connects two seemingly disparate shapes—a cool, dark gray, pyramid and a soft, warm, undulating flame—which refer to the organization’s expertise and mission. The distinction between the two sides is reinforced in the new tagline: Where Money Meets Mission. “The new identity needed to establish a link between the organization’s analytical, strategically focused, financial expertise and its warm, humane, aspirational culture,” explained Leslie Sherr, Director of Brand Strategy.

The result is a distinctive mark that breaks with many of the standard visual codes and cues of the financial services sector such as serif typefaces, blue-and-green color palettes and iconography like animals, mountains and other explicitly nature-based imagery. The new symbol has a bold simplicity with carefully defined alignments between the name and the mark that reflect the level of attention to detail one expects from a financial advisor.

We frequently host student groups; last week we met a group of students from Northampton University, London. We asked our new Buckinghamshire friends today if it was as cold in the UK as it is here at the moment, and the answer was a resounding “no.” Sorry about that!

On a related note, the next design documentary by Hustwit, Objectified, also with cameraman Luke Geissbuhler, will be released in Spring 2009. More about Luke’s role on this new film about product design here. The new trailer via YouTube:

(Pedro and Nusia are not part of the installation — although if they were, clearly they would be towards the lower right of the series.)

Past Annual Artists at C&G Partners include Monica Banks (2008) and Richard Barnes (2007).