NEST/NYTH design up for award

The Cardiff Design Festival has announced that Nest/Nyth - Making Wales Cosy logo has been nominated for The Best of Welsh Design Awards. With our project partner Cynnal Cymru and designers Hoffi, we were commissioned by the Energy Savings Trust (EST) to develop a brand identity for the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) funded ‘New Fuel Poverty Scheme.’ The scheme aims to target both ‘hard to treat homes’ and ‘hard to reach’ groups with a range of measures to bring individual low performance homes up to a significantly higher level (from Home Energy Check Rating F&G to C).

Previous energy schemes had incoherent names that would not satisfy the need to be clear and distinct. We concluded that the brand would require a fresh, new approach. Focus groups expressed that they rarely made unilateral decisions on home improvements, meaning that any brand must have recognition and appeal beyond the target audience to carers and family. Major obstacles for having work done on the house led us to conclude that the brand needs to reassure and engender trust.

The bird box is immediately readable. Use of a single word represents a clear break with previous over descriptive schemes. The Welsh language translation also sits well within the design. Nest was a word that had been chosen by people in focus groups to describe how they felt about their home. Nest puts the building itself at the centre of the brand. The concept is simple in its essence, but should also prove to be flexible over time to allow multiple variations on the theme.

The winners of the Cardiff Design Festival Best of Welsh Design Awards will be announced at the Festival Launch on Friday 30th September at the Senedd, Cardiff.  For more information about the award visit the Cardiff Design Festival website.

Click here for more information about the Nest/Nyth programme.