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Equipping Youth Organizations to Teach Positive Values

Design Corps was given the opportunity to help create a brand identity for a very special organization. The Values Institute is a company committed to helping youth organizations develop a sustainable values-based culture that will enhance their ability to identify, communicate and put into action values that build character in young people. Their approach is a top down leadership training with their Values in Alignment process. Our work included helping The Values Institute first discover and express what made their company special through our Brand Position Report. We then translated that information into a simple but effective brand identity.

Project Background

Based in Richmond, Virginia, The Values Institute has a unique hands-on style for helping any organization establish and convey their values. Unlike many similar companies that say they assist in values development, The Values Institute do not seek to sell curriculum, printed materials, or videos. Instead The Values Institute acts as a consulting team that comes in to evaluate, coach, and train a client’s leadership and staff to help them offer a unified presentation in the teaching of their values to their youth. “The Values Institute of America”, as it was known when it contacted us, asked Design Corps for help in developing a brand identity and to offer suggestions at the start of their own efforts to develop a web site.

Step One: Formulating a branding Strategy

To help spur dialogue and understanding we used the structure and questions of Design Corps’s Brand Position Report to synthesize an accurate overview about the organization. This overview included definitions of the organization’s brand character and strength, its target market’s description and expectations, and the organization’s distinctive attributes among its competition. This clarification of the vision, attributes, markets, audiences, and objectives of The Values Institute of America gave us a firm footing to start. It also led to one immediate result — a shortening of the company’s name to just “The Values Institute”. While they in no way downplay uniquely American values and while they even see these values as fundamental in training youth to demonstrate high-standards in community, the organization did not want be mistaken as having any political or nationalistic biases. Thus The Values Institute, as it is now know, demonstrates that it is not about teaching its own values but about helping any organization in expressing and developing its own unique core values to it youth.

Step Two: Logo development

Multiple concepts were presented in order to show multiple strengths of The Values Institute’s brand. These strengths included: alignment, coordinated effort, steering (of youth), lighting the way, and American patriotism. Designs fluctuated in emphasis of different characteristics in order to establish the proper balance.

Finalizing the final selection was fairly fast and only went through several minor alterations in exploring the best color and font selection.

Step Three: Assist in Web Site development

Finally, after establishing the new brand identity, we went on to help The Values Institute in selecting and populating a web site template. We looked at the latest versions that got good reviews and had features such as sliders, blogs, and programmer support.