Science for Animal Welfare rename, rebrand and website development
Science for Animal Welfare came to Ave at a pivotal moment. Having voted to change their name after nearly 90 years, they needed a visual identity, website, and supporting toolkit that could carry that change with confidence, without losing the trust they had spent a century building.
Science for Animal Welfare, formerly known as UFAW (Universities Federation for Animal Welfare), is the international society for advancing animal welfare through science. Founded in 1926 as the University of London Animal Welfare Society, it has spent nearly a century at the forefront of animal welfare research, playing a foundational role in establishing it as a scientific discipline and creating the term ‘Animal Welfare’. Today it works with academics, policymakers, and professionals across more than 33 countries, funding research, publishing internationally, and convening the global scientific community around evidence-based approaches to animal care.
The challenge
The existing brand had real strengths. Stakeholders recognised it as professional and trustworthy. But it was also widely described as dated, cold, and inconsistent. Shades of blue varied across channels. Typography was uneven. The logo didn’t hold up well at small sizes. And the name itself, ‘Universities Federation for Animal Welfare’, had become a barrier: it sounded narrowly academic, confused new audiences, and drew persistent comparisons with other acronym-heavy organisations in the sector.
Beneath those surface issues sat a deeper strategic tension. Science for Animal Welfare serves a remarkably wide range of audiences simultaneously: researchers publishing in peer-reviewed journals, corporate members, university partners, policy-makers, donors, students, and the wider public. These groups have different needs, different levels of familiarity with the organisation, and different reasons for engaging. A brand that worked for all of them, without feeling generic or stretched, was a genuinely complex design challenge.
There was also the question of continuity. With a name change coming in the organisation’s centenary year, the risk of alienating long-standing supporters was real. The rebrand needed to feel evolutionary rather than revolutionary, retaining enough visual equity to reassure existing members while signalling a meaningful step forward.
Requirements
- Modernise the brand while respecting the organisation’s heritage
- Support the transition to a new organisational name
- Improve brand consistency across all channels
- Reflect scientific credibility and authority
- Improve accessibility and usability
- Develop a flexible visual identity system
- Provide a comprehensive library of approved visual assets
- Enable staff to produce branded materials independently
- Create a scalable platform for future growth
- Ensure consistency between brand, website, and communications tools
Our approach
Rather than beginning with visual exploration, the process started with evidence. Working along side brand strategist Kat Knight we ran stakeholder workshops and a survey of over 100 respondents over 33 countries to give us a clear picture of how the brand was perceived, what audiences needed it to do, and where the gaps were. The findings were direct: scientific credibility was the non-negotiable foundation, ranked as a top priority by 76% of respondents. But people also wanted warmth, clarity, and a more genuinely international feel. The brief emerged from those findings rather than preceding them, which meant every subsequent design decision had a clear rationale behind it.
The visual identity
The new name, Science for Animal Welfare, was chosen by Trustees following the consultation. It does exactly what the research asked for: it communicates the organisation’s purpose immediately, without jargon or institutional framing.
The logo is built from two elements: a wordmark and an icon. The icon is a forward-facing form within a precise circle, drawing abstractly on natural shapes found across the animal kingdom, fins, wings, eyes, beaks. Its arrow-like structure signals momentum and progress. The circle conveys focus and intentionality. Together they create something that feels both scientific and alive, without resorting to any of the clichés the sector has exhausted.
The colour palette was built around the blue that existing audiences already associated with the organisation, updated for better consistency and accessibility. Warm accent colours, mint, green, sand and orange, were drawn from animal environments and the natural world. The research had been clear about what to avoid: red, fluorescent tones, anything that felt clinical or cold. The resulting palette is precise but grounded, professional but not sterile.
Poppins, an open-source humanist sans-serif, was chosen as the primary typeface. It supports strong typographic hierarchy, scales well across digital and print formats, and meets WCAG accessibility standards. For in-house use across Microsoft Office, Verdana provides a practical alternative that won’t drop out when documents are shared.
The brand architecture was designed to accommodate the organisation’s audience complexity. Four sub-brand badges, Member, University Link, Partner, and Student Scholar, allow the identity to flex across different communities while remaining visually coherent. Each uses the core palette alongside a secondary accent colour, and can be used independently or as part of broader communications.
Two additional brand devices give the system range and distinctiveness. Macro crops of the logotype create abstract, ownable backgrounds for use when photography is unavailable or unsuitable. Animal-derived textures, drawn from feathers, scales, fur and environmental details, add richness and tactile quality to layouts without relying on illustrative clichés. A modular grid system ties everything together, allowing layouts to be constructed consistently across formats from business cards to conference banners to journal covers.
The website
The new website was built on a custom WordPress installation, chosen for the control it gives the client over both the initial build and ongoing maintenance. The Gutenberg editor allows the Science for Animal Welfare team to manage and update content independently, without needing external support for routine changes.
The starting point was a thorough audit of the existing site. SEO analysis surfaced something important early on: the genetic welfare resource section was one of the highest-performing areas, drawing significant public traffic. That finding shaped the information architecture from the outset. The site was structured around two distinct user groups, scientists and academics seeking research and professional resources, and members of the public looking for reliable animal welfare information, with clear and separate journeys for each.
The genetic welfare section was rebuilt with a logical URL structure that improves SEO and smooths the transition from the old domain for users who had previously linked to or bookmarked that content.
The events area was rationalised and connected to the organisation’s existing CRM via a custom API, automating event population and removing the duplication of effort the team had previously managed manually. Membership management also runs through the same CRM, keeping all member data in one place and avoiding the friction of multiple logins.
Where the old site left the team dependent on external support and struggling with inconsistent, hard-to-navigate content, the new one gives them complete control, a rational structure, and a platform that actively surfaces their latest work. For the first time, it also looks entirely consistent with the brand that now represents them.
Would you like to see results like these for your organisation?
If you’re interested in finding out more about how we could work together, send us a message and we’ll get back to you.
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