launching a quarterly newsletter for members
07.08.2015 News
We are excited to launch the dashD ico-D Member newsletter. Released to your inboxes at a climactic point of change and growth for the Council, the newsletter is a connector: between the legacy of a 50-year-old organisation, and where the Council is now, reflecting the organisation's shift in direction since the historic 25 GA, as it transitioned into becoming a world body unifying designers.
dashD is a hub of select ico-D Member stories; it’s a tool for keeping you on-track with news, issues, events and initiatives led by the ico-D, all the while foregrounding the ways in which your networking, future-thinking and resource-sharing is advancing best practices and innovation within the design profession all over the world.
The name of the newsletter, dashD, is a playful iteration and nod to the graphic representation of the recent name change, to: ico-D
The “dash” is made literal: a mark of punctuation given letter-form. dashD 01 is the first in the series of quarterly communications from us to you, a curated collection of what happened over the last three months. Each issue of dashD follows the ico-D Board Meeting and is the first to delivers its message.
The uppercase “D” is suggestive of the power of capital D design - a phrase used to lead the name change.
dashD newsletter is a reminder, four times a year, of how, together, our intelligent network is becoming a connector, an advocate, a curator, and a credible seal for design value and professionalism.
Welcoming you to the first dashD,
Alisha Piercy,
Communications Officer and
Alexey Lazarev
Visual Communications Officer
dashD design story
Working on dashD, my focus was to develop ico-D's visual language, while maintaining Council's legacy and creating a pleasant reading experience.
The legacy of the organisation is carried through typography: Helvetica, the corporate typeface of the organisation since its inception as icograda in1963, is used in the header of the newsletter, meanwhile the text body, for the sake of consistency, adopts a newer sans-serif font. The use of Roboto, an open source typeface distributed by Google fonts, ensures the same legibility to every reader, regardless of their OS and device. Roboto is easy-to-read and exists in a variety of weights and styles, which makes the typeface extremely versatile.
The colour palette of the newsletter was developed in conjunction with colours chosen for ico-D’s newly launched website. My intention was to create a semantic connection between the two communication channels: thematic sections of the newsletter will reference, by use of a closely aligned colour scheme, thematic sections of the website. At the same time, the vibrancy of colours, and the contrast between them, speaks to the multidisciplinary character of the organisation—a Council, which represents design professionals from a diversity of disciplines.
The layout of the quarterly newsletter was conceived to create a clear, straightforward flow of information that would be easy to read and would not distract the reader from the content. dashD’s hierarchy was designed to avoid being cluttered or overwhelming: it is limited to a maximum of two levels in each section. The leading was increased to make the layout breathe more, and to create a rush-free reading environment.
I believe that both newsletters (dash D and capital D) will become central in unifying ico-D’s visual language across multiple platforms, and will complement ico-D's communications strategy by making it consistent and transparent.
If you’re interested to know more about the design process, feel free to drop a line at design@ico-d.org.
Alexey Lazarev
Visual Communications Officer
To access the dash D newsletter simply go to and login. For questions regarding your login coordinates, contact:
Caroline Jelovcic
membership@ico-D.org
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