StoryCorps

They’d helped America tell its story. Telling their own was a little harder.

My role: Executive Creative Director. I helped shape the brand story and led creative direction on the messaging, visual identity, and film.

The problem

You might know StoryCorps from a conversation you heard on the radio. Or maybe you’ve seen their mobile recording booth. They also have an archive at the Library of Congress, a podcast, and a bunch of programs that give people different ways to take part.

Ask someone at StoryCorps what the organization does and you’d get a different answer depending on who you asked. Which made sense. If you spent your days on the Mobile Tour, you’d probably explain it differently than someone who produced the podcast. We needed an answer both of them could give and still recognize their work in it.

Where we started

We talked with staff, went through years of materials, and got people from across StoryCorps in a room together. Somewhere in all of that, we kept coming back to a pretty simple thing. Two people sit down, turn on the microphones, and ask each other questions they might never get around to asking otherwise.

That’s where the archive starts. It’s where the radio stories come from. And if you’ve ever sat in your car to hear the end of one of those conversations, you know why it’s worth sharing.

What we made

That gave us a way to explain what StoryCorps does in three words: collect, preserve, and share. From there, we could write an invitation to record a conversation that sounded like it came from the same organization as a note to a donor.

We kept the handwritten logo, gave teal and yellow a bigger role, and put the people having the conversations front and center in the photography. We also gave programs like the Mobile Tour and initiatives like One Small Step a clearer way to show they’re part of StoryCorps.

The film was my favorite part of the work. We worked with production company Wanabí to build it around the voices of people who’d actually sat in the booth. You could hear what StoryCorps does just by listening to them.

What StoryCorps took with them

StoryCorps shared the film with its gala mailing list. We also handed over a brand book, a short messaging guide for staff, a presentation they could edit for partner meetings, and social templates and shorter cuts of the film. So the next time someone needed to explain StoryCorps in a meeting or put a post together, they had somewhere to start.

Agency: HOME agency
Film production partner: Wanabí