Illustrating community impact and expanding brand assets

Buildings along Cordova Street in Vancouver, near the CIRES office.

Date 2023

ClientBoldt Communications

Team

In partnership with Boldt Communications: Lesli Boldt, communications strategist & writer; Lisa Hemingway, creative director; Trina M’Lot, graphic designer & illustrator; Richelle Venegas, production designer; Madelen Ortega, project manager

We designed brand assets to help Community Impact Real Estate Society communicate its innovative approach to commercial property management.

Communication design challenge

Community Impact Real Estate Society (CIRES) fosters thriving, equitable, inclusive, and vibrant local economies and communities by curating a balanced portfolio of commercial spaces. As a property management social enterprise, it achieves its mission through a unique, multi-pronged strategy.

Our client, Boldt Communications, a BC-based communications firm that developed a comprehensive communication plan for CIRES, engaged iilo to help develop easy-to-understand brand assets that explain what CIRES does and how diverse stakeholders benefit from its work.

We started by creating one-page fact sheets that explain CIRES’s business model. To differentiate CIRES from market property managers who are solely focused on the bottom line, we highlighted its impact on community economic development, as well as its competency in managing real estate.

Infographic about how CIRES works and its community impact. — Infographics helped to summarize CIRES’s unique business model and how it creates community impact.

Two separate pages with visuals titled "Community Impact is Our Busines"s and "Commercial Real Estate as a Force for Good". — These versatile fact sheets can be shared as printed documents for in-person meetings and as PDF documents for online communications.

Design elements from the fact sheets were then expanded to social media graphics. We developed a series of flexible, branded templates so that CIRES’s in-house team can communicate to online audiences with the same personality and tone.

Social media graphics for Community Impact Real Estate Society. — Social media graphics were designed into templates for the client to activate in-house.

Outcomes

Working collaboratively with Boldt, iilo created the tools to help CIRES simply communicate its impactful business model. By presenting complex information in a thoughtful and visually pleasing way, the benefits of CIRES’s innovative approach are clear to diverse target audiences, including property owners, non-profit organizations, governments, and tenants.

The user-friendly brand assets can be used in a variety of settings, helping CIRES generate leads for its commercial retail unit portfolio both online and offline. With more leads comes more opportunities for CIRES to nurture thriving neighbourhoods and community impact.