Designing for trans equality.

A case study of Giorgia Lupi and Pentagram's brand design for Advocates for Trans Equality.

This is part two of a series on brand design and the LGBT movement.

ICYMI, part one: did you know that one of the most influential corporate brands in the world influenced the creation of the most recognizable LGBT logo?

Now, part two: designing for a new trans-led advocacy supergroup.

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I often meditate on the line between extra/ordinary. Can you have an ordinary life, an ordinary moment, when you live in an extraordinary body?

An organization revealing a new logo can fall anywhere on that extra/ordinary spectrum. Now that judging a brand redesign is a spectator sport, on the website Brand New you, too, can weigh in on where a design lands. Your choices are actually “Great,” “Fine,” or “Bad.” Labeling a design extraordinary is inviting hyperbole into a profession already accused of puffery. But I’m here to make the case for an extraordinary design.

Extraordinary work is done for extraordinary clients.
—Milton Glaser

I saw the recent brand reveal for Advocates for Trans Equality not on one of the many trans accounts I follow, but on Pentagram’s own handle.¹

pentagramdesign

A post shared by @pentagramdesign

Just this fact of discovery alone would make the design extraordinary. In a moment where questioning trans existence is normalized and trans bodies are subjected to violence and policing, one of the world’s most distinguished design studios lent its brand expertise and, importantly, its brand halo to further legitimize transgender people.

Also—the work is great.

Extraordinary design starts with a great brief.

You’ve heard it before, here and in other places: there has been an exponential increase in anti-trans legislation proposed since 2016. The volume and frequency are so high that even when the majority of bills are stopped, enough passes, which dramatically impacts healthcare and safety options for trans people across the country.

These efforts are not coincidental; this is a coordinated attack by right-wing organizers going state by state to challenge the rights of transgender youth and adults. It takes money, time, people, strategy—everything we have—to fight every bill.

Seeing the landscape becoming more hostile, the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund (TLDEF)’s Andrea Hong Marra and National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE)’s Rodrigo Heng-Lehtine decided they could be stronger and more effective together.

Our organizations have a long history of working together and informing and strengthening each other’s work. The National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) is the leading voice for trans rights in Washington, D.C. The Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund (TLDEF) is the preeminent legal advocacy group for trans people facing discrimination.

Both our organizations had grown tremendously over the years. Both, in fact, were the strongest they’d ever been and were doing great work.

We realized we could do much, much more together than we could separately. With unanimous consent from both of our boards, we decided to merge our two organizations into a single powerful force on behalf of trans people in America.

Notably, NCTE and TLDEF were both founded in 2003, in the wake of the Human Rights Campaign’s brand and strategy shift in 1996. For decades, trans organizers have struggled with HRC’s willingness to take gender issues off the table in the name of political expediency. While HRC is now committed to transgender rights, having a trans-led, trans-focused organization at the table helps to ensure that fighting for our rights is not deprioritized.

With the leadership of both organizations aligned, the team went looking for the right partner to bring their vision to life.

Brief: Design and name a new integrated organization dedicated to fighting for the rights of trans people in America.

Extraordinary designers see humanity and possibility.

To celebrate my new job leading design for LinkedIn News, I bought Pentagram’s massive double-volume catalog celebrating the studio’s 50th anniversary. Pentagram has an unusual-for-design-studios partner model where the business owners are also the creators. Each partner runs their own team, creating work across various disciplines while maintaining their fingerprints. This structure balances the collective commitment to quality while celebrating each partner’s individuality.

While everything from the studio is labeled “Design by Pentagram,” the partner is always credited accordingly. Meaningfully, the strategy, name, and brand system for Advocates for Trans Equality emerged from a project team led by Pentagram partner Giorgia Lupi. Giorgia is relatively new to the studio; she joined in 2019 after building up a globally renowned reputation as an innovative, human-focused information designer.

Her work regularly boggles the mind as it expands the heart. Every week for a year, she and Stefanie Posavec meticulously tracked their lives and then hand-drew an infographic on a postcard to send to the other across the Atlantic. What?! Years later, while suffering from long Covid, Giorgia kept a spreadsheet of her symptoms and treatments that would make you cry, which she then turned into the most jaw-dropping interactive opinion essays in The New York Times. (Perhaps more impressive is her behind-the-scenes recap.)

Giorgia’s entire career is focused on spotlighting humanity. I can’t think of a better approach to trans legitimacy.

Giorgia Lupi & Stefanie Posavec’s Dear Data: A Friendship in 52 weeks of Postcards

Pentagram: Living By Design: The Directory

Extraordinary design flows from collaboration

“Lupi is a natural collaborator. She never misses an opportunity to sing the praises of her team and her external collaborators. As she says, “For me, collaboration with my team is everything.”
—Pentagram: Living by Design: The Directory

Pentagram tells a nice story for all of its projects, but this work meant so much to me that I wanted to hear more than what was written on its site. I contacted Giorgia, who connected me with Phil Cox, a strategist on her team. Phil relayed more of the process and intention behind the team's work.

Giorgia and her team are known for often creating work in the nonprofit and impact spaces. When NCTE and TLDEF reached out, they were upfront that while they were design experts, they were not LGBTQ+ subject matter experts. Giorgia promised a collaborative process that would weave trans perspectives into every step of the design process.

For over a year, NCTE, TLDEF, and Giorgia's team at Pentagram collaborated to create the new organization's brand strategy, choose the right name, and design the new look.

Giorgia's team started with a robust discovery period: studying the competitive landscape and interviewing over 15 movement leaders across the spectrum. Phil expressed to me how wonderful the process was; the new organization's leadership was always excited to collaborate and open to possibilities.

Extraordinary design emerges from well-developed strategy.

“The brand needed to be equally at home at a rally; in a courtroom; at a fundraiser; or in a congressional hearing.”

—Pentagram’s A4TE Case Study

Remembering the pushback against HRC's rebrand and the criticism of its new "corporate" approach to organizing, I wondered if similar resistance emerged during the discovery phase listening tour. Phil shared with me that the leadership was clear that they work within governmental frameworks—this new organization needed a brand that holds up within the institutions they are trying to influence.

At the heart of Pentagram's scope was naming the merged organization. A design project often starts with the name fully baked, but when naming is on the table, there is an opportunity to more fully express a strategy. Phil shared with me how the team considered over 100 names, deeply discussing the meaning behind every choice.

The team asked themselves, "What does it mean to be an advocate?", "Is equal the right word?", "Should we say trans or transgender?"

When I saw the brand reveal, what struck me immediately was the savvy use of the number 4. Every trans person on the internet knows that "T4T" signals not just a dating preference but also a sensibility. The acronym A4TE tells trans people: we're here for each other.

Extraordinary design works as good as it looks.

“What works good is better than what looks good, because what works good lasts.”

—Ray Eames

The more I look at the A4TE wordmark, the more I am delighted by the craftsmanship. The lines are clean, and the wordmark is bold. The design is timeless; Giorgia's A4TE would look at home lined up next to iconic midcentury logos. At the same time, the design solution is well-prepared for the flexibility that the digital age requires. Take a moment to appreciate how the right edge of the T sticks out just so in the vertical lockup but neatly tucks under the T for the horizontal versions. All while staying in sync with the A and the E.

Giorgia's team delivered a set of logos that can be used for various applications. Need a square mark for a button or a social profile pic? Check. Need something bold and rectangular, a logo that can be read on a banner in a march? There's a solution for that, too. Designing for interactive or video? There are animated elements as well, bringing the brand to life. This might seem like table stakes for a new brand, but I have repeatedly worked with expensively purchased brand solutions offering far less.

It is one thing to create a beautiful design—but what separates a "nice logo" from a great brand is the system and guidelines that sit underneath. As someone who has repeatedly torn my hair out trying to design materials for a half-baked brand, I am grateful Giorgia set A4TE up for success.

All images from Pentagram's A4TE portfolio.

Extraordinary design integrates references while creating something brand new.

For a trans organization, the T is everything. Even the old logos for NCTE and TLDEF distinguish the T in their names. Giorgia’s design completes a hat trick with flair to spare. While transgender people fight to be seen, this logo emphasizes trans visibility with a T created with stripes invoking the equality symbol and the transgender flag. The team also developed a dynamic, animated T that highlights its importance and gives the rest of the brand system patterns to play with. Over time, this stylized T could become familiar enough that it is recognizable all by itself.

Extraordinary design lays a foundation for what comes next.

I asked Phil if I missed anything and he pointed me to the organization’s new website: A4TE.org.

The site is still emerging. Pentagram and A4TE are working with their digital partner Decimal to integrate, and stylize, the two organization’s extensive libraries of resources. The colors and type will look great on a billboard—but a PDF helping someone change their name will likely have more personal impact.

Thank you to Andrea Hong Marra and Rodrigo Heng-Lehtine for having the vision to go bigger. Thank you to their boards and staffs for working tirelessly for the rights of trans people everywhere. And thank you, Giorgia Lupi for bringing your fresh eyes, huge heart, exquisite taste, and talented team to make sure we look fabulous when we take our seat at the table.

A4TE credits, from Pentagram’s site.

xx Kyle

1. IYKYK. If you are new to Pentagram, start here. You’ve seen their work. It’s everywhere.