Sewing

Collaboration
with Change
Back to the roots of Central
and Eastern Europe

To connect. To inspire. To move

forward. Together, twenty five
countries at a time. That is the
mission of CEE Changers. Ours was
to create the brand symbol that
would tell the tale visually.

The Task
CEE (Central and Eastern Europe) is a part of Europe that stems from Eastern
Germany and Austria, spreads to the south towards Turkey and Greece and then
stretches all the way up in the north to Ukraine and Russia, coming to a total of twenty
five diverse countries. CEE Changers is an online community that aims to work actively
with that historically problematic diversity and in fact make good use of it. Created
for the startup activists, the platform aims to bring all of them closer, and foster a new
habit of sharing, problem-solving and cooperation that transcends national borders.
With roots from the very region, CEE Changers is created by the community for the
community.
Our task was to craft a brand symbol that unites those ideas and then implement the
visual language on the communitys website.

The Process
To discover the depths of the CEE Changers brand was to
rediscover our very own roots too. Even though most of the
countries from CEE are neighbours, the collaboration or
connectivity has never been a defining characteristic of our,
at times, troubled relationships. Change, innovation, success,
idealism: all these words sounded like a breath of fresh air. But
we needed to link them beyond their direct meaning in a brand
mark with a higher spirit.
We immediately set on a discovery journey for the common
denominator. In symbolism, in language and in history
More than half of the CEE countries are of Slavic descent.
We could not skip that. We began at the Slavic neopaganism.
Slavic artistic visions are believed to have existed even before
Christianity but there is almost no written or archaeological
evidence to showcase them. Yet what is clear is that nationalism,
concern for the environment, warrior themes and indigenous
values were prevalent subject matters.

We did not stop at the past though. We were working with the

We were fascinated by the Slavic roots connection, but inside

concept of working together towards a common goal, a rather

we felt it did not do justice to the noble and almost avant-garde

modern concern for the more than 200 million inhabitants

philosophy of CEE Changers - moving beyond centuries of

of the CEE region. We pushed ourselves to the core value of

differences, the region could work together, building a whole,

collaboration. We worked with typography because we wanted

which is far bigger than the sum of its parts. That togetherness,

to see where the two distinct alphabets, latin and cyrillic, could

we mostly found where the two Cs of Collaboration

have a contemporary date.

intertwined. Their seamless symbiosis accurately expressed

the idealistic nature of CEE Changers, while the commonality

The search iteratively revealed the spirit of CEE Changers. We

spread even as far as languages and alphabets go. Collaboration

found three forms that embodied that spirit. We called those

and change were forever connected. Tied as good partners, we

Collaboration, Network and Local Meets Global. It was time to

made the final decision.

make a choice.

Once we had the brand symbol in place, we moved on to match

the colour scheme that would best suit the brand identity and
context. We went through a few variations, leaving powerful
colours behind due to their cultural baggage in the region
and skewed towards the stability and respect of blue. But it
could not be any blue. It had to be bright and humane just as
the relationships, the platform of CEE Changers, was aiming
to foster. The chosen shade of blue communicates credibility
and trustworthiness, yet does not suffocate with unnecessary
stiffness and formality.
Using the light blue colour as a starting point, we chose
the secondary colours for brand extensions and CTA. We
experimented and settled on green, red and dark blue, but we
left the door open for more colours to come in. We wanted to
remain flexible and open-minded because we could only dream
what would come next from the future changers of the region.

www.kickflipx.com
hi@kickflipx.com

Victor Hugo 3, ap. 4b,

1124, Sofia, Bulgaria

The guys at Kickflip are geniuses,

and they make me happy while
brewing the new CEE Changers
branding.
-Anca Albu, CEO

Thank you for

the attention.