StartOut needed to appeal to a broad range of young DSG people, their parent’s family and friends, the DSG community as well as sponsors and partners.

It was important to create a brand that was inclusive of all diverse sex, sexuality and gender but was also positive and non-confrontational for young people trying to figure out their sexuality.

The Start Out brand proposition is all about providing a world of potential. It’s about being there, providing support and most importantly, providing someone to talk to. It reinforces that being different is OK but is not about forcing people to come out or put a label on their sexuality.

We created a strong personality that carefully balances being positive, supportive and non-judgmental but also refreshing and real for young people. The play on the brand name provides a powerful way to demonstrate this. “So Gay. So What?”

Our design disassembles the traditional gender iconography to create simple shapes that represent all the diversity of sex, sexuality and gender.
Free of clichés, the identity reframes the conversation around sex and gender to highlight that being different is OK.
The typemark has been created to start conversation. StartOut collapses down to ‘SO’ or ‘Start’, allowing the conversation to begin.
The visual language and identity is simple to use and easily adapts to different platforms and situations. The tool kit enables its volunteer staff to activate its visual identity at a grass roots level.
The modern colour palette reinterprets traditional gender colours while straight, powerful visual language helps them punch above their weight.

The brand has resonated well with key audiences. At public events, the StartOut team receive great feedback on the way our organisation presents itself. It not only connects with people that are looking to use its services, but also with other stakeholders such as donors and partner organisations.

Truly Deeply supported us every step of the way. The team engaged with us early on in the process, before we had clearly articulated our brand strategy, and were able to quickly and expertly distill our broad thoughts concisely to capture the essence of our organisation.

The visuals and the language that were created have been extremely valuable for us to articulate our purpose to users of our site and other stakeholders.

We can’t recommend Truly Deeply highly enough. The team is fantastic to work with and the brand Truly Deeply helped us with has become the basis for all our messaging, digital and physical assets, and the way we present ourselves in all situations. We have also been able to return to Truly Deeply along the way for specific advice when we were stuck for ideas and to iterate on subsets of the brand like the language we use to different audiences. The team were able to jump back into our mindset and help out immediately.