Specialisterren has had a new house style and website since September. In order to develop this, we worked together with Waanders.studio. Waanders.studio is a strategic design agency that uses creativity to make companies recognisable. They do this with a team of four people, headed by founder Nils Waanders and his partner Michelle Morsink. Below you can read more about our creative partner and the realisation of our new corporate identity!
Waanders.studio
Nils started working as a freelance designer ten years ago and has had the opportunity to do many different jobs in that capacity. With the arrival of Michelle two years ago, there was more focus on visualising the story of companies in a distinctive way. The mission of Waanders.studio is to provide companies with a recognizable visual identity that perfectly matches their mission and vision. Nils and Michelle have a good listening ear and want to understand what a company stands for.
Nils: “We keep asking questions until we have a clear understanding of what the essence of a company is and we have enough stories to draw inspiration from. I find it interesting to then make those stories visual in a way that is not too obvious, so that people can marvel at them.”
The collaboration with Specialisterren
To arrive at the style as it is now, Waanders first followed an archetype training course at Specialisterren. During this training, the people at Specialisterren were questioned about how they see Specialisterren and how they want customers to see it. It quickly became apparent that it was a challenge to incorporate both the social and business aspects in a recognisable corporate identity in a well-balanced way
Nils: “When designing, I was looking more for the look of a tech company than a charity. We wanted the end result to be modern and businesslike, yet accessible.”
After several internal iterations of the design, the style emerged as it is today: modern and accessible. Each colour stands for something. Blue and black are the organisational colours, green stands for Specialisterren’s social mission, yellow for the testing services we provide and red for RPA. These colours support the story of the various elements that make up Specialisterren. Ultimately, the inspiration for the new logo came from Sjoerd’s journey, which you can read more about in this post.
Nils: “The most challenging part was to be able to translate the story properly as an outsider, with all the opinions and tastes that exist. It was great that Specialisterren’s management gave us the freedom to create something completely new. It was also great to see that the ideas eventually took shape in the form of, for example, a beautiful website.”
The icing on the cake
In addition to developing a new corporate identity and designing the Specialisterren website, Waanders.studio selflessly designed the Social Impact Board website. They did so because they wanted to support our mission to help as many people with a form of autism as possible find work. This was for us the cherry on the cake of a very successful cooperation. Waanders.studio, thank you!
