Strategy by design for Active Partners

Going with the flow.

The Active Partners Trust brings together efforts across Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire to get more people participating in sport and physical activity. A registered charity, the trust receives funding from Sport England and the National Lottery – delivering work through Active Derbyshire and Active Notts.

Strategic design.

The trust had produced Making our Move, a strategy to get people across the two counties active in a way that suits them. The new document needed design input to bring it to life. Having already created the overall brand for Active Partners, The New Fat was asked to take on this important task.

Creative artwork - illustration of characters.

Our original brief included a request for illustrative or infographic input for a flowchart-type diagram on one of the strategy pages. However, we saw an opportunity to add interest, diversity and an element of fun, by replacing photos with drawn characters which people could relate to. This also enabled us to reflect all local communities and to show a range of everyday activities and situations – in keeping with the thinking behind the strategy.

Coherent design concept.

Our characters feature heavily in the strategy, becoming a dominant theme. To cement it's informal feel and a consistency of style, we also incorporated engaging infographics and a bright colours in keeping with the Active Partners brand style. The end result is a very easily readable and brand consistent strategy document.