Creating housing together.
Branding for Wohnbau-Genossenschaft Nordwest.

Wohnbau-Genossenschaft Nordwest (wgn) is a non-profit housing cooperative that promotes long-term co-operative housing construction in various ways: It develops areas and builds affordable housing. Additionally it manages real estate and takes on property management for other cooperatives. Wgn pursues holistic fundamental values: Housing for everyone is a prerequisite for societal interaction, and their commitment to it is a sign of solidarity. In doing so, they strive to achieve a high standard of living and quality of life for all people who are at home at wgn and its partner organizations.

After a fruitful strategy workshop with the wgn executives, we worked out the cornerstones of the new branding. By putting the value “collectively” at the core of the brand and defining the target groups, it became clear that a shift to a friendly, lively corporate design was due, which would appeal to building owners as well as a down-to-earth, mixed target group. SUAN condensed these strategic considerations and developed a holistic corporate design that responds to the fundamental values ​​of the cooperative and puts people at the heart of it all.

Services

Brand strategy
Branding
Corporate design
Corporate language
Editorial design
Interaction design
Web design

Logo and imagery

The lower case of the brand wgn conveys agility, the break-up of the small letter g underscores this. In a specially constructed font the g emphasizes the cooperative (Ger.: Genossenschaft) it signifies. The circle represents the whole, collectivity, comprehensiveness in several cultures. It is not just an element of the logo, but also applied in all media.

This is where the imagery comes into play: wgn is there for everyone, for people like you and me. Various people are shown together in the media, accompany you on the website or look at the pictures in the brochure as if they were right in the middle of the action. These people are also often combined with circles. Sometimes it is a single person, sometimes several people are placed in a circle together, as is the case with shared apartments. The color scheme is cheerful and crisp. In the circles it is used as a pastel-colored gradation though, always on white, so that it moves into the background, and the focus is clearly upon the media content. The combination of the complementary colors dark green and pink in the logo adds further tension to the design. A dark color like petrol green makes it possible to set texts legibly in the primary color. The carefree, lighter pink as a counterpoint lightens up the dark, in combination the colors look dynamic and flexible. This unusual color combination in the industry gives the wgn a coherent identity.

Stationery and editorial design

Web design

The structure of the website has been simplified and the main competences are shown clearly. Various properties and rental properties are neatly listed and, for a better overview, their locations are marked on a map. The team introduces itself personally; the employee portraits include the colors defined in the corporate design.

wgn.ch