#ICYMI: HAVEN’s Award-Winning Branding Work in 2021

Earlier this year, two pieces of client work were recognized with First Place Awards. [In December 2021, HAVEN was also recognized with an Excellence in Small Business award from the Union County Chamber of Commerce. To read about that recognition, read this blog post.]

NAGC Blue Pencil & Gold Screen Awards: Award-Winning Brand Identity

The National Association of Government Communicators Blue Pencil & Gold Screen Awards awarded HAVEN CreativeⓇ First Place in the Brand Identity category for the Newtown Economic Development branding.

The goal of the award-winning branding was to develop a brand platform to strategically position the Town of Newtown as an economic center for small businesses and a safe and friendly retreat from the city for families. “Unique by nature” became the town’s tagline supporting brand pillars of “historic,” “eco-conscious” and “inclusive by nature.” 

The newly established logo, brand pillars, and implementation roadmap provided the Economic Development team with a guide for successful implementation. To read more about our work with Newtown, check out the Newtown case study. The National Association of Government Communicators (NAGC) is the only national not-for-profit association dedicated to advocating, promoting, and recognizing excellence in government communication. NAGC’s Blue Pencil and Gold Screen awards are listed as one of the 21 most coveted government leadership awards.

NC3C Excellence In Communications Awards: Award-Winning Annual Report

Our client, Gaston County, received the First Place Award in the Annual Report Category from the North Carolina City and County Communicators Excellence in Communications Awards. Notably, the award highlighted our design work on the annual report which stemmed from the recent rebranding that we performed for the county. 

The award-winning Gaston County Annual Report Card (ARC) is the first award presented to Gaston County by NC3C; 2020 was the first year in NC3C’s existence that Gaston County had a Public Information Officer. The branding for the project was based on the new logo and branding work we performed earlier for Gaston County. Previously, Gaston County had only ever used a County Seal before and never a logo. To learn more about this logo design process and the other branding work performed, you can take a look at our Gaston County case study. 

During the judging process, one of the judges wrote the report had “a modern and professional layout. The incredible photos, easy-to-understand data visualizations and iconography throughout make this report card easy to flip through while providing plenty of information for a deeper dive.”

Congrats on the awards, Gaston County & Town of Newtown! We do this work to build community, not just to be an award-winning branding agency. It’s nice to be recognized, but, more so, we are so glad we get to partner with great communities like Gaston County and Newtown, CT to help reach our goal of impacting 1 million lives through our work.