We’re celebrating International Day of Peace 2023 by unveiling our new brand and launching a brand-new website. This new look has been in development for a long time, and we’re very excited to share it with you.
Read on to find out why we’ve rebranded, what you can expect to see on our new site and how it will help us support local peacebuilders around the world.
I joined Peace Direct in April and in my short time with the organisation, I’ve been blown away by the knowledge, skills, empathy and passion of the local peacebuilders we partner with. Local peacebuilders are at the frontlines of transforming conflict and preventing violence, but their work isn’t widely understood.
For those of us living in stable democracies, ‘Peace’ can sometimes summon up images of tranquillity, calm or stasis. It can seem weak, or passive. At Peace Direct, we believe peace is an active process that requires ingenuity and bravery to maintain. Local peacebuilders tirelessly deploy their expertise, connections and skills to dissolve tensions, negotiate ceasefires and help communities and individuals heal, rehabilitate and build new futures.
We wanted to emulate this active approach by creating a clearer, bolder, more engaging public profile. Working with Effusion, a creative design agency, we have implemented a distinctive visual language that will help us raise awareness of local peacebuilding, improve understanding and increase support for peacebuilders.
Discover the story behind our new look, and how it will enable us to better support local peacebuilders’ vital work.
At the heart of our new look is the new Peace Direct logo. Anyone familiar with our old logo will see the echoes, but this design brings exciting new elements. The speech marks represent the ‘P’ and the ‘D’ of Peace Direct, forming a globe that shows the Global South and the Global North working in partnership.
Partnership is at the heart of Peace Direct. We work closely and collaboratively with our partners, learning from them, shifting power to them and amplifying their voices. Our relationships are founded on shared principles of mutual accountability, flexibility, local leadership and sustainability.
We’ve included strong and vibrant colours that will help highlight our partners’ stories online and in print, enabling their work to shine.
The new website is designed to showcase the stories of the people we work with and be easier for supporters – new and old – to explore. The simple top-line navigation, tagging and search enable people to quickly access what they’re looking for and, crucially, easily find different ways to support peacebuilders.
Our old brand helped us do a great job of growing our profile within the international development sector. But if we want to better support our partners, we need people outside the sector to get on board too.
We want to ensure that our partners – often the first responders in a crisis – can do what they need to do quickly and effectively, without limitations. Time and again they tell us about the value of flexible funding that they can use however they see fit, that is not limited to a particular activity or area.
Such funding also means that in times of crisis – whether a sudden resurgence of violent attacks, or a natural disaster – we can provide rapid emergency funds to enable our partners to support their communities until they can resume their peacebuilding efforts.
This is why it’s so important to us to grow Peace Direct’s public profile. Having a large base of committed, passionate supporters giving whatever they can afford means the world to us and the people and communities we work with.
Our rebrand and new site are just part of our profile-raising plans. Soon, we’ll be launching a global campaign co-created with ten peacebuilders from around the world. Keep an eye out for the launch across all of our channels.
In the meantime, be inspired by this year’s Peace Day theme, ‘Actions for Peace’: explore our new website to learn more about local peacebuilding and discover how you can take action to support local peacebuilders today.
Grace Rowley,
Joint Head of Communications and Fundraising
