HerMeNow

It was our deep privilege to create the full brand experience of the HerMeNow Accelerator, a program designed to highlight women-led social enterprises and give them the tools and resources to grow their businesses and achieve maximum impact in their communities.

/ the brief

The global impact investment sector is a $1.16 trillion market. Yet, less than 1% is coming to MENA (Middle East and North Africa), the only region in the world where poverty rates have gone up since 2014. A part of the reason is the dearth of accelerators to support social enterprises. The HerMeNow Accelerator was created to address these issues. By specifically targeting women-led social enterprises, the team at HerMeNow hope to create a platform for broader socio-economic development in MENA. StardustConcept was asked to create the full brand identity - logo, color palette, typography, collaterals and the website.

/ the concept

At the outset, we were given carte blanche. We were informed that it is targeted for women entrepreneurs, with 10 finalists who would graduate from the program. We need to use the tagline which was already created - “Giving Women a Chance to Shine”. How were we to represent the serious nature of this endeavor while maintaining approachability for the lay-person? We set out to solve the logo first.

// the logo

We considered the brief from the client and boiled it down to a few sentences.

“HerMeNow Accelerator empowers women-led social enterprises with technical, financial and mentorship resources to transform the world. 30 Women-led social enterprises will benefit from a 2 week Sprint phase. 10 Women-led social enterprises will benefit from a 5 months accelerator program that supported them achieve their objectives and unlock impact for culture, education and mindset change toward gender and equality.”

There was a lot of brainstorming. And a lot of drawing.

And even more drawing...

We eventually settled on a few directions.

“Let Women Speak” was an early inspiration.
So why not visualize it with a mic?

A speech bubble that
doubled as the female symbol

The speech bubble was also an abstract woman.

An abstracted woman who’s silhouette morphed into a megaphone

The idea fizzled out of steam just as we became excited about a new direction - A floral pattern to represent “blooming/flourishing”. We were inspired by jewelry designs to represent the subtlety of the feminine.

The floral patterns started to trend towards a complex shape that was built out of repeating a simpler shape.

The idea felt connected to the impetus of the accelerator - to bring together women who would learn from each other, form bonds and raise each other up.

We began to actively pursue a floral pattern made of women figures.

until finally....

A flower made up of 10 women finalists raising each other up together.

We used multiple fonts in the ITC Avant Garde family to create visual separation in the HerMeNow wordmark.

// final logo

// color palette

We did test pink as a shortcut to presenting the feminine; it was abandoned for being too cliched.

We were encouraged by the team at HerMeNow to go deeper, while maintaining a more elegant approach. Unlike others in the non-profit sector, HerMeNow needn’t be a pushy, shouty voice. We pivoted toward pastel colors and quickly found the palette.

Primary