S. C. Johnson & Son, Inc.
Making a corporate giant culturally relevant
S. C. Johnson are an American multinational, privately held manufacturer of household cleaning products including, Mr Muscle, Toilet Duck, Pledge, Oust, and Glade.
The company is one of the oldest family-owned businesses in the U.S, being founded in 1886 by Samuel Curtis Johnson in Racine, Wisconsin.
In April 2018, the company updated its tagline from "A Family Company" to "A Family Company at Work for a Better World" which marked the start of a long-term commitment to the environment and helping to build a more sustainable world.
The company is committed to reducing carbon emissions, energy consumption and waste, and continually look to take action for instance, teaming up with The Milwaukee Brewers to create a new market and new recycling model for the more than 1 million plastic cups used each season, Liverpool Football Club to recycle more than 500,000 plastic bottles used at Anfield each season, and Plastic Bank on solutions to reduce the global crisis of ocean plastic by helping increase recycling rates and address the challenges of poverty in impoverished communities.
I was commissioned by Brandtech Consulting, S. C. Johnson's agency, to help bring these stories to life through their social channels with a new visual identity system.
The brief was to create an identity that helps the brand to deliver their message in a way that is culturally relevant, reflects the energy of their partners, matches the radical, environmental initiatives whilst being rooted in the company’s unique history and position of being the oldest family-owned business.
Inspired by family photo albums the identity layers typography with imagery, imitating the looseness and feel of collage to create a fluid and functional identity that facilitates varying messages and imagery to tell the stories of how the company work towards building a more sustainable world.
The new design underlines the core message of “It Takes A Family” which can be flexibly applied across a spectrum of use cases including, “It Takes A Family to End Plastic Waste”, and “It Takes A Family to Build A Home”, as well as facilitating brand recognition with revolving combinations of the brand’s colour palette and clear co-branding lockups.
