Logo Redesign

CAC-ACCR Rebranding & Marketing Materials

Client

Canadian Association for Conservation of Cultural Property (CAC-ACCR)

Industry

Non-profit / Cultural Heritage

My Role

Lead Designer / Creative Strategist

Location

Canada

Mockup of rebranded colour logo for CAC-ACCR on stationery. Showing bottom lefthand corner on black background.

The Project

CAC-ACCR is a national non-profit organization representing conservators across an unusually broad range of disciplines, including paintings, textiles, archaeological materials, architectural heritage, and more.

The organization’s existing logo no longer reflected the breadth, sophistication, or professional standing of its membership. The new identity needed to feel relevant to every member, regardless of specialty, while functioning as a fully bilingual brand system where English and French applications carried equal visual weight.

This was not simply a logo refresh. It was a strategic identity project for a national organization with a complex audience, a bilingual communications mandate, and a strong need for visual inclusivity.

Original Logo
New Logo

The Thinking

The central design challenge was inclusion at the identity level.

Any symbol tied too closely to one discipline, material, or conservation specialty risked excluding part of the membership. A paintbrush, textile reference, artifact shape, or architectural detail might have represented one group clearly while leaving others feeling secondary.

The solution was to make multiplicity the concept itself. Fragmented colour shards enclosed within a circle became a way to represent many disciplines held together within one unified professional community. The mark suggests range, precision, and shared purpose without privileging one conservation specialty over another.

The bilingual logo system required careful planning from the outset. French and English text can vary significantly in length, creating spatial challenges in a mark that needs to feel balanced and intentional in both languages. The identity system was built to account for those differences from the beginning, rather than treating the French version as a secondary adaptation.

That consideration shaped the structure of the logo suite and supporting materials, ensuring the brand could work consistently across publications, conference materials, digital assets, and annual communications.

What This Demonstrates

  • Strategic identity design for a national organization with a broad and diverse membership
  • Creative direction rooted in audience analysis, inclusion, and long-term brand usability
  • Bilingual brand system development with equal consideration for English and French applications
  • Conceptual logo thinking that balances symbolism, neutrality, and organizational clarity
  • Ability to extend an identity across publications, conference materials, digital assets, and templates
  • Senior-level judgement in creating a flexible system that supports both brand expression and practical implementation
Mock-up of an iPhone with branded Instagram post tiles behind it in black, gold, and teal
Mock-up of tri-fold brochure. Brochure design: using black, gold and teal colour blocking with close-up photography of conservators working. 
Mock-up of a button pin on a grey background featuring the CAC-ACCR symbol — a circle made of gold, black, and teal mosaic with 'CAC-ACCR' in black sans serif font
Mock-up of a bilingual conference program cover with refreshed branding on a grey background. Left side is displayed upside down. Design has the logo top left on white, a large detailed photo below, and a block of sans serif text on black.
Mock-up of member directory booklet on grey background. Design includes the title of the directory in sans serif font framed in the black, teal and gold mosaic in the bottom left-hand corner.