Polco & NRC

Polco and NRC came together with a collective wisdom to serve clients of the GovTech industry for the good of all. Polco’s agile platform and real-time analytics married with NRC’s gold standard in public opinion research solved for our apathetic political climate by building a bridge of communication between cities and organizations and the verified public of those communities.

Our goal was to seamlessly unite Polco and the National Research Center for new and existing customers. Messaging for the new joint company needed to retain equity, speak to benefits, and most importantly, highlight the singular value they offer when combined.

The merger of two companies with individual strengths and aligned missions is something to celebrate! We aimed to generate excitement and momentum surrounding Polco and NRC.

Tackling two identities at once presents a challenge. First, we explored the more subtle approach of a “visual refresh.” We tweaked existing marks to align visually but without making them unrecognizable from their previous identities.

However, the merger of Polco and NRC posed an ideal time for a more dramatic rebrand. We wanted to rethink both logos from the ground up, focusing on the long term and what it could represent in a more “divergent rebrand.”

Logomark: For Polco, we’d fallen in love with “representing every voice” from our Strategy phase and pushed that forward visually with quotation marks.

The National Research Center gives communities the confidence to enact a plan by filling in the gaps through data and analysis. An abstracted N feels very strong and institutional, while the central hole highlights the unknown that NRC fills in with research.

The final mark for Polco combines those quotation marks with a compass, representing communities guiding their future. One of the original intentions behind the name Polco was "Policy Compass,” so it felt great to tie in their history visually.

Visual Language: Polco and NRC help decision-makers hear all the voices of their community; a unique and powerful differentiator. We needed a colorful system to represent the diversity of the communities Polco and NRC serve.

Not only are the quotes different shapes, they are also different colors, bringing an added layer of richness to the visual language.

Framing the enlarged quote marks in squares abstractly suggests a quilt, and just like a quilt, Polco weaves together the opinions of a community in a beautiful fabric of data and analysis.

Combining the quotes in a larger system creates a vibrant and fun pattern. It feels youthful, hopeful, diverse, and interesting. The quarter circles and additional angles are abstract representations of pie charts or splines.

After thorough research into the joint company's audience and value, we had a strong foundational understanding to bring to interactive design. For this client, we designed Polco's homepage to help further establish brand elements and execution for the Polco and NRC teams going forward.

Polco's primary audience is City Managers, so we were able to design the homepage with them in mind. City Managers are a close community, often connecting at industry conferences, so highlighting other cities happily utilizing Polco was important. Mapping the 500+ cities using Polco would look visually cluttered, so we created a simplified map and highlighted select case studies. The navigation could be simplified to "For Communities" and "For Residents" along with links to log in or sign up.

By establishing the positioning statement and customer early on, we were able to design the best interactive solution for our client's needs.