But, in spite of having successfully lived their mission for this many years, the organization has struggled to activate the community around them. While the stories of children who have experienced abuse and neglect are not new, Boys and Girls Harbor is constantly challenging themselves to continue bettering the future of the children lucky enough to come into their care, and they’re in need of a new audience to help. It’s time for people to know exactly who they are, and that begins with a new name and a new brand.

They’ve now become Today’s Harbor for Children, and their new descriptor, “A community for our youth,” conveys the idea that we share a responsibility for the children in the greater Houston area. It launched last week, accompanied by a new visual brand.

Boys and Girls Harbor has had a few faces in the 70 years of their organization, but their old logo had run aground a decade earlier and their brand lacked storytelling capability. And, like all the best clients, they knew it.

Our design team was challenged to make the new logo and other visual brand elements appropriate for the entire range of children at the harbor—kids from elementary school to 18. Sure, the brand needed to feel child-friendly to dance on the heartstrings of donors, but the kids at Today’s Harbor for Children have to live with the new brand. Literally. So when we jumped into our initial visual research, we kept this consideration top of mind. We were particularly excited by our research on the International Code of Signals, the visual maritime code used by ships all over the world. All ships have on board a set of flags comprised of simple symbols (circles, rectangles, triangles) in a limited color palette that enable them to visually communicate to other ships. It was at this point that we recognized mutual goals: Much like ships need to communicate their mission and intentions to others on the sea, Today’s Harbor for Children was looking to communicate their work to a larger audience.

We borrowed an assortment of simple shapes and a large part of our color palette from the maritime code. The bright but limited colors and geometric imagery were appropriate for all age groups, and we added graphic “wind” and “water” elements to help further our illustration capabilities. A delightful hand-made screenprint texture added over the top of all the graphic elements brought warmth and very human element to the system of shapes. When parts of the system are combined, they can feel serene or dynamic, like the sun on the sea or like pennants blowing in the wind. They can interact with photos; they can be stark or busy, vibrant or monochromatic.

We even used these shapes to build Today’s Harbor for Children their logo, a poised paper ship on an even sea. Paper boats are symbolic of childhood, optimism and possibility, and this clean-yet-textural logo speaks to the structure the organization brings to the lives of children.

There’s the obvious association of the organization’s location on the water, but the why goes further than that: Every ship is unique—in name, in crew, in design. Yet, they all share the singular purpose of moving you to your destination. At Today’s Harbor for Children, it’s up to the individual to make that journey, even if the waves crash against them and the tides carry them to unexpected places. But it’s the journey that shapes these children, and it’s the goal of Today’s Harbor to put the right people and environment around these kids to help them along the way.

There’s a lot of ceremony and celebration around the naming of a boat, and the day Boys and Girls Harbor became Today’s Harbor for Children, was no different. We’re proud to get to own even a part of helping to spread awareness of this wonderful organization and the work they’re doing to make sea-worthy young citizens.

In the last several decades, Boys and Girls Harbor has done amazing work.

Popping the Cork on a New Brand

In the last several decades, Boys and Girls Harbor has done amazing work. For 70 years they have been steadfast in caring for our region’s abused and neglected children.

Condensed

2017 was a challenging and interesting year for our communities—both locally and globally. From the lowest of lows in Hurricane Harvey to a city-wide celebration for our Houston Astros, there were a lot of ups and downs. Through it all though, I don’t think I ever witnessed anyone lose hope. But what does hope actually mean and can it have real impact? 

It’s a question I find myself asking continuously, especially as I kicked off 2018 supporting Holocaust Museum Houston as The Butterfly Project made its way to the United Nations. It’s a campaign that challenges us to use hope to cause change and combat hatred everywhere it shows up. That hope CAN and DOES have the power to change the status quo. 

A few weeks ago this exact conversation was sent to my inbox via Brain Pickings. After reading through it, it prompted me to consider how we observe and work through the big challenges, such as the impact of the 2016 elections, or even the smallest things like the small stressors of our daily lives. 

“All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up,”John Steinbeck wrote to his best friend at the peak of WWII. “It isn’t that the evil thing wins— it never will — but that it doesn’t die.”

Caught in the maelstrom of the moment, we forget this cyclical nature of history — history being merely the rosary of moments the future strings of its pasts. We forget that the present always looks different from the inside than it does from the outside — something James Baldwin knew when, in considering why Shakespeare endures, he observed: “It is said that his time was easier than ours, but I doubt it — no time can be easy if one is living through it.” We forget that our particular moment, with all its tribulations and triumphs, is not neatly islanded in the river of time but swept afloat by massive cultural currents that have raged long before it and will rage long after.

I have long believed that critical thinking without hope is cynicism, but hope without critical thinking is naïveté. Where are we to turn for lucid hope, then, in cultural moments that inflame despair, which so easily metastasizes into cynicism? 

That is what the inimitable Zadie Smith explores in a piece titled “On Optimism and Despair,” originally delivered as an award acceptance speech and later adapted for her altogether fantastic essay collection Feel Free (public library). 

Escape from 2017: Thoughts on Optimism and Despair

From what I can tell, the theme for the start of 2018 is “thankfully we made it through 2017.”