It was a rainy December weekend back in 2021. I had recently hosted our very first social walk for just 12 people around Hampstead Heath.

Inspired by the really lovely afternoon, I decided to spend the weekend building a basic website about the small Sunday walks we were hoping to run every week.

With my incredibly limited design skills, I decided to seek help from a “free logo generator”, inputting the purpose of our community, the name and colours that appealed.

The result? A simple yet passable image of three people in a circle that appeared to be a group of friends. Admittedly, they could have equally also as easily been a family.

A Small Logo, A Big Journey

Back then, it seemed like a small and insignificant choice, and it served its purpose. It was simple, practical, and symbolised togetherness.

Fast forward to today, and we’ve evolved into something far bigger than I could have ever imagined.

Over the past three and a half years, we’ve grown to a membership of over 45,000 young adults across our channels, and we’ve now hosted over 500 community activities from board games afternoons, quizzes, silent discos and many more.

We’ve been fortunate to collaborate with some of the UK’s most well-known brands, including John Lewis, Snapchat, Lush and WholeFoods.

We’ve co-delivered support offers with charities like Beyond Equality, and in December, we launched our first national campaign, #TheLonelyMillion, which generated 40 million impressions across the country – culminating in an event in Westminster, bringing together MPs to advocate for wider social change.

Earlier this year, we also just launched an ground-breaking research project with a couple of major universities on social connection amongst young adults.

Yet, despite all this progress, we were still using the same logo and website from 2021 and realised it needed to change.

The Time for Change

So last year, we committed to building a new website that better reflects our growth, impact, and expanding areas of work.

But more importantly than that – we realised we needed a visual identity that truly encapsulates the fun and joy of our activities; a brand that’d be recognisable, meaningful, and representative of our mission.

To achieve this, we were very fortunate to partner with two of London’s very best creative and web agencies.

As part of the creative process, we spent countless hours discussing the essence of what we do, leading to fascinating conversations about friendship, loneliness, and human connection.

We discussed everything from what a friend really looks like, the emotional weight of loneliness, the challenges of building connections in the modern world and many more.

What we Learned – 4 Key Insights

A lot of soul searching lead us to four key insights about loneliness and building social connections:

1. Loneliness can feel like a dark place, but it’s our body’s way of reminding us to reconnect and we shouldn’t ignore it or push it down. It’s an opportunity, a new beginning and a blank canvas to build something brighter than before.

2. The way out of loneliness is filled with ups and downs. Building and sustaining new connections is a journey with false dawns, setbacks, and moments of doubt. It is also a journey that we shouldn’t have to walk alone, and sometimes we need a little lift and a guiding light to illuminate the path ahead.

3. Great friendships don’t just happen, they need to be built. They take effort and time to create (research says around 200 hours to be precise) and if they are to last, we need the right tools to help us build strong new friendships.

4. Building connections is fun. We know that forming new connections can be daunting, but it can also be fun, transformative, highly rewarding and confidence-building.

After a lot of back and forth with a huge number of concepts considered, these insights were instrumental in helping to shape our new brand identity:

The Logo

The new logo is a reflection of the journey of loneliness to meaningful connection, and the role that we aim to play within that transformation. It brings together three key elements:

🟡 The Yellow Circle – This is designed to symbolise a beacon, as we aim to be that guiding light for the journey in the dark, like a streetlamp illuminating the path home or a lighthouse in rough seas.

🔄 The Arrow – This is designed to signify that crucial turning point in the journey of loneliness and our hope to help power young adults towards a brighter, more socially connected future.

😊 The Smile – This is designed to symbolise the outcome we want for everyone in our community, the joy, connection and fun that we aim to create through our work and happier, healthier young adults.

The Colours

Our new colour palette is more than just aesthetics, it aims to communicate the emotion behind our work.

✨ Warm Yellow (Friendship & Positivity) – The colour of friendship and construction – signifying warmth, fun, positivity and the building of new connections.

🌤 Sky Blue (New Beginnings) – Inspired by the open skies, our sky blue is designed to symbolise fresh starts, exciting new horizons and new possibilities.

⚫ Deep Black (Loneliness & Isolation) – The black aims to represent the dark shadow that loneliness and isolation can cause, but also the contrast from which connection and light can emerge.

🔴 Impact Red (Urgency & Passion) – Loneliness is a growing social issue, and it demands action. The red aims to highlight the urgency with which we approach our work and the passion and determination we bring to driving change.

The Tools

Alongside the colours and logo, we also developed a new series of tools, each imbued with their own meaning, around how we work to tackle loneliness and build friendships.

From our campaigns, to our research to community activities – the tools aims to communicate the different strands of our work, in a visual form.

But for us, all this isn’t just a rebrand. It’s the next stage of our journey to making a bigger impact and creating a more socially connected future for young adults.

In the coming months, we’ll be expanding beyond London into new cities, helping to grow new social circles and leveraging our research and campaigns to bring about wider social change around loneliness.

Alongside this, we’ll also be developing new resources to inspire you, help you build stronger social connections and overcome common challenges.

We’ll also be rolling new functionality on our website to make it even easier for you to participate in our activities, join our community and build connections outside of our events.

But in the meantime, we are so grateful to the agencies that made this all possible, from the creative minds who helped us redefine our brand to the partners who continue to support our mission.

And most importantly, we’re grateful to you – our amazing community for being part of this journey.

Thank you for believing in this mission and for helping us build a more connected world!