Neighborhood Tech Help
Brand, Visual Identity, Print
- Ilya Milstein
Illustrator - TYTHEdesign
Community Engagement
Pioneering a citywide tech literacy program.
We worked with the NYC Department of Housing Preservation & Development—in partnership with the New York, Brooklyn and Queens Public Library systems—to launch a citywide initiative called Neighborhood Tech Help. This new program invites NYC residents to get tech help from trained volunteers in their own neighborhoods. One of its primary goals is to combat the gap between people seeking social services and their ability to access those resources, which are increasingly online.
Brand, Visual Identity, Print
- Ilya Milstein
Illustrator - TYTHEdesign
Community Engagement
Challenge
Our design process involved bridging the needs and opinions of numerous stakeholders across organizations, while ensuring that the resulting identity remained strong and unmistakably New York. For example, each of the three borough library systems had its own identity—logo, colors, typography—that needed to align with the initiative identity. We sought to surface common elements among the libraries’ brands and anticipate the constraints that each library’s staff might face when it came to customizing, printing, and distributing materials locally.
Result
Once our brand system was in place, the masterful illustrations of Ilya Milstein truly brought the brand to life. The project team emphasized the importance of having residents ‘see themselves’ in the designs, and therefore we all worked painstakingly to make the images as inclusive and representative as possible for the particular communities where the initiative was piloted.
“The power and impact of combining a public service with clear, straight-forward design—thoughtfully conceived and carefully crafted—cannot be overstated and will bring critical tech support services to some of New York City’s neediest residents.”
