Happy Creative get on the culture trail with Curious Minds

Blackpool-based creative agency Happy Creative have gone on the cultural trail with an organisation engaging with young people.

Since being established in 2009, Preston-based organisation Curious Minds has been working across the North West of England to champion and support creative and cultural education initiatives.

As the Bridge organisation for the North West, Curious Minds works with education providers to connect young people to the region’s rich cultural offer.

Working in collaboration with Curious Minds, the design team at Happy gave the organisation a brand refresh and designed and built a new website which allows users to check out links to its campaigns, forthcoming events and Curious Stories – a collection of shorts from some of the most inspirational people about what inspired them as children. It also has links to the many organisations and partners they are proud to work with.

Hakim Shujaee, graphic designer at Happy, said: “You cannot be creative and not be curious which is what we wanted to show with Curious Minds. They are bright, they shine a light onto the cultural diversity in the region and they inspire.

“Inspiration was key in the re-brand and our design work, we wanted to use images which would encourage people to get involved with Curious Minds and find their own identity by giving the organisation a unique one which would stand them out from the crowd.”

The refresh has given Curious Minds the confidence to reach out to new sectors, expand the horizons of their advocates and grow the organisation, taking on new staff at its Guild Hall base to further improve the lives through the many cultural paths they travel.

Derri Burdon, chief executive of Curious Minds, said: “Before Happy came along, our branding didn’t say Curious in the way we wanted it to.

“The main colour was grey, hardly an image we wanted to portray as we are trying to get young people to become passionate about culture. “We work with all sorts of cultural organisations, from small community-led groups to large museums, galleries, theatres and everything in between so we needed the marketing collateral to reflect this. Happy gave us the identity we needed. The feedback has been amazing, from colleagues in the office to our partners, advocates and the youngsters we relay it to.”