Co-designing the Young Gamechangers Fund with the Co-op Foundation
It’s bold. It’s built with young people. And it’s changing the way youth-led funding is delivered forever. Young people are transforming communities into safer, more sustainable and more inclusive places to live, powered by the £4.5m Young Gamechangers Fund from Co-op, the Co-op Foundation and the #iwill Fund.
For too long, young people have been left out of the decisions that affect them the most.
The £4.5m Young Gamechangers Fund from Co-op, the Co-op Foundation and the #iwill Fund will tackle this head on with grants of up to £20k a year for young people, transforming communities into safer, more sustainable and more inclusive places to live.
The Young Gamechangers Fund is delivered by the Global Fund for Children and Restless Development, alongside the Co-op Foundation. In addition to long-term funding, successful applicants will also get access to peer support networks, training and mentoring to help their vision come to life.
We love the community and vision that The Young Gamechangers Fund gives to young people and we are so excited to be able to work within the youth sector again. The opportunities through the fund are endless, so nooh Studio wants to do things differently. We want to build communities of the future together.
Co-op Live, the UK’s largest indoor arena, supports the Young Gamechangers Fund through an annual donation of at least £1m to the Co-op Foundation from 2024.
nooh® Thinking: Designing with young people for young people
In order to create the Young Gamechangers Fund, we co-designed the brand with 15 young designers who joined the nooh team for 4 weeks. We recognised how important it was to include young designers as we look to encourage engagement and build community with the youth sector. Each week we concentrated on a part of the design process.
Week 1
In week 1 we looked at brand personalities and moodboards to start to get a feel for what the team of young designers liked and disliked. We came up with different brand emotions and values which consisted of:
Growth, youthfulness, nature and community
Enthusiasm, energy, creativity, optimism and positivity
Strength, intuition, importance, inspiration
Cozy, playful, love
Week 2
In week 2 of the 4 week design process we zoomed into some design ideas. Everyone in the young design team brought something to the table, from collages, to illustrations, sketches and suggested fonts. In one of our favourite 1 hour design sprints, we watched designer Charlie design live and bring the ideas to life, doing what nooh Studio does best! At this stage we had four design options and asked the whole team their thoughts and opinions.
Week 3
Leading onto week 3, we went back to the narrative and asked the young design team to write a strapline. Here were some of our favourites: Empowering Youth, Transforming Communities, Driving Force Behind Youth Led Change, Supporting Young Activists and Campaigners. Whilst that was happening we continued to push the brand identity and started voting on our favourite ideas. At this point we thought it was valuable to include a few of our bad ideas, as it’s part of the process and it’s as important to see something you don’t like, as much as you do like.
Week 4
In the final week, it was full steam ahead. Go, go, go! The final concept was chosen, using building blocks in the logo and doodles for the graphics. The building blocks in the logo represent the foundational elements within communities. The structure symbolises growth and innovation.
As part of our co-design sprints with young people, we asked them to help us draw doodles that would bring the Young Gamechangers Fund brand to life. These doodles represented some of the values of the Co-op Foundation, which are closely linked to Co-op’s vision of ‘Co-operating for a Fairer World’.
We absolutely love working with the youth sector, their ideas and creativity will help shape the future, and we’re so proud to have been able to include them in this design process. We see first hand how the youth sector is impacting branding, storytelling and design (you may like a recent blog post where we shared how Gen Z are doing this) and we know how important it is to support and encourage the next generation.
Big thanks!
Overall, we’re really proud of the outcome we created for the Young Gamechangers Fund. A big thank you to Co-op, the Co-op Foundation and the #iwill fund, for working with us. Plus an even bigger thank you to the young designers we worked with, who put their all into an intense 4 weeks of design with nooh Studio.
If you’re an aspiring designer, remember, even though the process is supposed to look like this, it sometimes looks like this. Trust the process and make nooh ideas!
