Ocean Alliance Foundation had been operating for 11 years with a dated, inconsistent visual identity that undercut their work's credibility and reach. Their materials ranged from clip-art-heavy PDFs to stock-photo brochures — nothing that communicated the gravity and urgency of marine conservation at scale.
The brief was ambitious: create a complete brand identity system that could hold up across 12 country offices, work for both grassroots volunteer events and high-level donor presentations, and feel authentic to the ocean environment they protect.
Designer Elena Marchetti spent the first two weeks immersed in Ocean Alliance's world — joining a virtual field briefing, reviewing years of photography, and interviewing three team leads. The result is a brand that moves like water: fluid, deep, and full of quiet motion.
Before touching Figma, Elena joined virtual field briefings with Ocean Alliance staff, reviewed 11 years of campaign materials, and conducted 45-minute interviews with their Communications Director, a field biologist, and a longtime donor. The goal: understand not just what Ocean Alliance does, but how it feels to be part of their mission.
Elena explored three distinct directions: "Depth" (emphasizing the unknown, mysterious qualities of the deep ocean), "Current" (the constant motion and interconnectedness of water), and "Surface" (the visible, beautiful face of the ocean that humans connect with). Ocean Alliance chose to synthesize all three, and Elena developed a system that could move between moods.
The logo mark — a stylized whale within a circle representing the horizon — went through 14 iterations before landing. The color system uses six stops named after ocean layers (Deep, Current, Surface, Foam, Air), each mapped to specific applications in the guidelines. The typeface pairing of Fraunces for display and DM Sans for body was chosen for its warmth and accessibility.
Elena built a complete Figma component library, wrote a 60-page brand guidelines PDF with plain-language explanations (designed for non-designers to use independently), and ran a 2-hour team training session. All 12 country offices received customized starter packs.
Primary logo + 4 lockups. SVG, PNG, PDF formats. Light and dark versions.
60-page PDF covering color, type, logo usage, photography, and voice.
Instagram posts, stories, LinkedIn headers, Twitter cards.
40-slide Google Slides template with master layouts and custom graphics.
Donor newsletter, campaign announcement, and impact report layouts.
48 custom icons in 3 weights — SVG and PNG, Figma-native.
Art direction guide, image filters, and curated Unsplash collection.
2-hour recorded walkthrough session + Q&A for all country offices.
Tracked 6 months post-rebrand, compared to same period the previous year.
"Elena didn't just give us a new logo. She gave us a language to talk about our work — one that finally matches the importance of what we're trying to protect. We hear from donors all the time that we 'look legit now.' That matters more than people realize."
— Sarah Chen, Communications Director, Ocean Alliance Foundation