Former tennis pro Andre Agassi immortalised the line “image is everything” in a late ’80s television ad for Canon cameras. He was sporting a lion-mane-style mullet at the time, but nevertheless, uttered a universal truth. Image is powerful. It has an enormous impact on how we perceive and engage with a person, company, or, in the case of disability, an entire sector.
Before the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) rolled out in Australia, disability organisations were funded directly by governments in what was known as ‘block funding’. As such, they got very good at marketing themselves to their customer: the government. A distinct visual language came to define the disability space - one that communicated a needy cause and elicited a charitable response.
Disability-focused organisations tend to have similar sounding names. Venture to the websites of these businesses and they’ll tend to look a bit the same, too. You’ll often be met with the same type of photography, the same icons and the same type of language.
A lot of organisations fell into the trap of this stock-image heavy, same-as-it’s-always-been aesthetic. We did too, in the early days of Hireup. But we wanted to do better. We are passionate about fostering a fresh approach and telling a different story. Be as sceptical as you like about marketing, but branding matters. We can only achieve impact with our work once people have, first, engaged.
This week we launched our rebrand, one that has seen our logo and colour palette evolve. Rebranding a company is no easy - or inexpensive - task. So, as always, we want to be transparent about why we’ve made these changes.
We want to be fully accessible
Embarrassingly, we learned too late that our former logo’s shade of blue might not be easily viewed by those with visual impairments or colour vision deficiencies. We’re calling out our own error here and setting it right. Our new colour palette increases legibility and meets the strict AAA accessibility standards. Our font style has also changed, slightly, to improve readability.
We’re dedicated to making Hireup work for all people, all abilities and all devices. Regardless of visual ability, if something is made easier to access, it’s made easier to access for everyone. It might be more challenging to design within certain parameters, but this forces us to find creative solutions - even innovation (SMS texting, for example, was originally created for the deaf community). Inclusive design is something that we’re big champions of - and will be talking about more into the future.
We want better cultural integration
Last year I hosted a Remarkable Insights webinar with a panel that included Professor Bruce Bonyhady, key architect and “father” of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), where we discussed how the NDIS is for all Australians. It’s something everyone should be proud of and yet, the general perception is that it only exists for and benefits a certain cohort of people.
As service providers in the disability sector, we have a responsibility to tell it like it actually is. The NDIS is the greatest nation building project on earth. It presents enormous opportunities for job creation and digital innovation. For this to be effectively communicated, our brand needs to speak to the broader community, not only to people with disabilities and people working in the sector. This way, we’ll take everyone along for the ride.
We want to do justice to our work
Our branding needs to better represent who we are and what we’re doing. We have more than 230 team members at our support office in Sydney and employ thousands of workers who are supporting people with disability and their family members to pursue good lives. We are investing back into the disability community and sector. We want to be an employer of choice for people with disabilities in Australia too.
Our shared aim is a society where organisations in the disability sector will be no less innovative and influential than the Apples and Airbnbs of the world. If companies, across all sectors, find inspiration in what we're doing and include the voices of people with disability in every stage of their own design processes, maybe there won’t be any need for segregated ‘disability’ services and products in the future? What we consider ‘mainstream’ will be just be fully inclusive.
To get to this point with our rebrand, we spent hundreds of hours consulting with our clients, account managers, support workers, Hireup support office staff and external advisers. We want our company's image to reflect the power of our community and our vision for the future, and our re-brand is one way we’ve committed to telling this story.
I'd love to hear what you think. And if you want to see more about this rebrand, check this out: https://hireup.com.au/brand-update/
Jordan O'Reilly
Hireup co-founder and co-CEO.