Laidlaw Foundation Turning a 75-Year Legacy Into a Brand That Reflects Its Future A brand, a communications strategy, and a new website, built together so Laidlaw Foundation’s next chapter, and everyone who carries it forward, could show up in one identity. » What We’ve Done » Laidlaw Foundation Brand Strategy & Identity Logo system, flexible colour suite, stakeholder-aligned process Communications Strategy Audience personas, messaging framework, built for small teams Web Design & Development Custom WordPress build, performance-optimized, fully responsive The Mandate A Strategic Plan Built for Brand, Voice, and Digital Presence Laidlaw Foundation invests in Black, Indigenous, and racialized youth leading change against systemic barriers in education, justice, and child welfare, and its new 2025–2030 Strategic Plan called for a brand, a communications strategy, and a website built to match where the foundation was headed next. That meant an identity that could grow with the plan and a website simple enough for the team to manage day to day. Third Wunder’s mandate covered all three at once: brand, voice, and website, built as one system instead of three separate projects. Channel Strategy The Research Behind Every Decision That Followed Before any design work started, Third Wunder mapped exactly who Laidlaw serves and built a communications strategy around it: four detailed personas, each with a full jobs-to-be-done breakdown covering their goals, their barriers, and a staged journey from first contact through to ongoing involvement. Direct Beneficiaries, Embedded Allies, Institutional Connectors, and Strategic Ecosystem partners each got their own communication preferences and storytelling approach, so no single piece of content had to speak to all four at once. That research became the foundation the brand, the voice, and the website were all built on. Youth Leader A direct beneficiary applying to and leading Laidlaw’s youth-led programs Peer Advocate A former grantee now mentoring the cohort coming up behind them Program Director An embedded ally running youth programming on the ground Educator Ally An institutional connector helping youth find their way to Laidlaw in the first place Channel Strategy Shifting the Frame Around Who’s Actually Centered The strategy is built on one shift in framing: not Laidlaw as an organization that supports its communities, but Black and Indigenous youth as the true custodians of the future they’re building. That shift set the standard for everything written afterward, keeping grantees at the centre of the story and Laidlaw in the background, supporting rather than directing, language that shows up throughout as “we support, we don’t direct” rather than the usual charity framing. Some of the sharpest edits came from Laidlaw’s own staff, who replaced generic terms like “marginalized” with the names of the actual communities involved and swapped “safe spaces” for “accountable spaces” during the strategy workshops themselves. Branding An Identity Rooted in Every Perspective That Shaped It Third Wunder built the brand to hold three perspectives at once: the team on the ground working directly with the youth Laidlaw funds today, leadership’s forward-looking vision for where the foundation is headed next, and the people carrying its 75-year history. Discovery workshops and visual exercises gave each perspective room to shape the direction, rather than asking any one group to compromise for the others. The result is an identity rooted in the people the foundation serves, as much as the story it tells about itself. Past The 75 years of history and legacy the foundation carries forward Present The team working directly alongside the youth Laidlaw funds today Future Leadership’s vision for where the foundation is headed next The Meaning Behind the Mark The Brand System The final mark, Rooted Flame, takes its name seriously: a geometric, layered icon that reads as a stylized plant or flame taking shape from the ground up, built to feel distinctly Canadian and timeless rather than tied to one literal image. The colour system splits deliberately in two, a cool palette for the foundation’s Black Youth Programs and a warm palette for its Indigenous Youth Programs, sitting alongside a shared set of default colours that hold the whole brand together. It’s an icon built to represent growth from something rooted, the same way Laidlaw’s work grows from the communities it funds. Brand in Practice A Toolkit, Not Just a Logo and a Homepage The brand guidelines go well past a logo and a colour palette: five button styles, badges, bullet markers, and card treatments are all specified for both light and cool colour modes, alongside a documented brand pattern, an angled chevron motif capped at one or two uses per page so it accents a layout instead of overwhelming it. Full content-section examples show headers, body copy, buttons, and badges assembled together in both a warm and a cool variant, giving Laidlaw’s team a working reference, not just a style guide to interpret. The same system carries across documents, social, digital, and print, so every piece Laidlaw publishes shares one consistent thread. The Website A Website Built to Get Out of the Way The new site was built to carry out the same 2025–2030 Strategic Plan driving the brand and communications work: a platform that helps Laidlaw connect and scale with its communities, so the team can spend its time on that work instead of managing technology. Third Wunder migrated a decade of existing content into a new WordPress build on its own WunderTheme and WunderPlugins suite, with a sitemap shaped directly by the persona work so beneficiaries, allies, connectors, and the public each land somewhere built for them. The handover included hands-on training on writing for the web, so the team can keep publishing on its own, simply and without a developer in the loop. The Result A System Built to Carry What Comes Next Laidlaw Foundation exists to put resources and decision-making power in the hands of the youth leading change in their own communities, and every part of this project was built to keep that mission legible, from the boardroom to a grantee’s first visit to the site. The foundation now has one brand, one communications framework, and one website working from the same strategic plan instead of three separate efforts pulling in different directions. It’s also built to grow: the same colour system and persona framework are built to carry new initiatives like the Black Youth Fund and expanded Indigenous youth programming without starting over. Brand Identity Communications Strategy Custom WordPress Website Persona-Driven Content Resource Library Project History Tell Us About Your Needs Looking to update your digital presence? Reach out to us and let’s make some magic!