PINK.LIFE

Branding, Corporate Design & Website

Bringing an initiative to life

Branding for the Berlin queer scene

During Corona lockdown, Berlin's creative scene fell silent almost overnight. Cultural institutions had to close and artists lost their audience. Especially the queer community was suddenly no longer visible. But the initiative PINKDOT wanted to change that. It aimed to give back a stage and an income to the artists and cultural workers through an online portal. PLEXGROUP was tasekd with turning the vision into reality and to give the project a face. A naming, a logo and the entire appearance were developed to finally take shape in a web portal. The accompanying launching campaign provided the proper publicity. 
As the portal was not to remain the only project of PINKDOT gGmbH, we started with a naming strategy for a brand architecture. PINK.LIFE was born and went online as a platform for queer art.

The Initiative

PINK.LIFE is a non-profit project of PINKDOT gGmbH, the team founded by Ina Rosenthal, which now already has four members. Queers can present their art here completely free of charge. Clearly arranged and user-friendly, PINK.LIFE provides selected concert recordings and podcasts, readings and stage shows, paintings and music, panel discussions and political events. Because according to the firm opinion of the initiators, Berlin cannot remain a rainbow capital without its colorful creatives: PINK.LIFE brings back queerness. The whole project is also designed as a source of revenue for the artists. They receive 100% of the voluntary contributions of the guests from the integrated webshop for social payment.

Development of the brand

The brand DNA revolves around the LGBTIQ+ community, and we want to reflect that in the tonality and design. The modular brand architecture for PINK.LIFE takes future projects into account and creates a structure with the necessary flexibility for change. PINKDOT as the "umbrella brand" sets the tone. The color pink not only gives the brand its name, but is also a strong identification factor for the queer community and thus points the way forward both in wording and in color. The search for the right shade of pink, somewhere between Telekom magenta and pink ribbon pink, was central as an important basic element to make queerness clearly recognizable externally and internally. With the lead color set, a color palette followed in which the diversity of the community could be depicted without merely being colorful. Logo, layout principles, typography and imagery result in a coherent corporate design that works flexibly for all digital or analog media.

The launch campaign

The portal was launched with a big bang and was flanked by a multimedia launch campaign. The messages and imagery communicate the brand DNA and the vision of the initiative. Five motifs were designed as a series to present all the central aspects of PINK.LIFE. Three text levels interlock: headline, copy and footer follow the mechanics of Surprise - Engage - Inform. All motifs function cross-medially, are flexible and can be expanded as desired. The image concept shows scenes from art and culture that can no longer take place in the lockdown, but are brought back to life on PINK.LIFE. The concert or the museum visit with friends. A transparent mask puts one person in focus, citing the situation in which the web portal is used: mostly alone from home at the computer, but as part of a digital community.
To begin with, the wording aims to popularize the new name and relies on playful variations that place .LIFE at the top level.

The heterogeneous search for artists on the Internet can now be bundled and strengthens the queer community. With this lighthouse project, the initiators are bringing Berlin's various LGBTIQ communities together on a multimedia platform in times of isolation.