Reclaim Pride Larvik
Back when I lived in Vestfold, I was involved in a local queer pride organization called Larvik Pride. The group organized the annual pride parade in Larvik, as well as other LGBTQ+ events like movie screenings and theater performances. As the only pride organization in Larvik, Larvik Pride was important, not only to the locals, but to the queer community in the surrounding areas as well.
The backstory
After many years of activity, Larvik Pride shut down in the summer of 2024. With that, the 2024 parade was canceled, and the absence of the group was felt deeply in the town. We were flooded with people asking if the parade would happen, hoping for something to be organized. Along with other former volunteers, I realized we needed to take action. We felt let down by the previous leadership and realized that there was no longer a pride organization to represent us. We decided that a new pride organization was in order, one of radical inclusivity and anti-capitalism that was vocal against pinkwashing.
The new pride
The result of this was the formation of Reclaim Pride Larvik, and with it, the need for a whole new visual identity. As the teams graphic designer, I was tasked to come up with a logo, and the visual identity for our organization. After we came to an agreement on the name, the ideation process began right away. For the visual identity we wanted a more radical, bold approach, and as such I chose a style influenced by grunge and punk aesthetics, with some nods to internet culture. At the same time, the logo had to be flexible enough to work in different contexts and with a variety of aesthetics and was given a cleaner style.
The original sketch of the logo
The finished version of the logo
The logo
In the starting phases of the logo I did not have a clear vision of what it could look like, but some of the more obvious imagery came to mind, a heart, a rainbow, and possibly the initials from the name
I gave up for the night and went to bed, while trying to fall asleep the idea that the current logo is based on suddenly came to me. I quickly reached for my phone and started sketching my idea in the Instagram app (my favourite way to quickly scribble down ideas quickly). This logo proved itself to be very versatile as it could be displayed in its entirety for larger branding, but for small surfaces (such as the Favicon of a website), can be reduced to only the heart shape and the R. Additionally the rainbow inside the heart can be replaced with different flags for different usage.
At this point the logo was pretty much completed, the only changes I did after that was making the rainbow wavy to represent Larvik (Larvik is a coastal town), as well minor tweaks. The next challenge then became tackling the visual identity of RPL.
Visual identity
As previously mentioned, the visual identity of RPL draws aesthetic influence from punk and grunge aesthetics. A lot of queer history is deeply intertwined with punk and other subcultures where societies "rejects" intermingled, additionally the rejection of the need of approval from the status quo in favor of our own communities, and the spirit of rebellion serve as great inspiration for our organization.
Social Media
To create a visual identity in the 21st century, it's important to consider how this identity will be used in the digital space. Nowadays social media is the main place that many people will learn about your existance, as such, you have to make sure your social media not only visually interesting, but consistent enough that anyone who might scroll past your content will quickly identify who posted it. We recognize that our goal of outreach to the newer generation requires a recognizeable Instagram and tiktok branding, as of now we haven't started doing events or proper social media work and this has limited the ammount of design work I can do on that front.
The website
The website is still in development and will be a simple site with resources and things such as event information. More to come soon!
Now what?
We are still in our starting phase and currently do not have the capacity to organize events at the moment. For that reason I haven't gotten to design a lot of graphics for events or social media. In the future I hope to keep working on this as it's something I'm quite passionate about. We are also in need of volunteers and if you wish to contribute to this (and especially if you live in the Larvik are), please contact us at kontakt@reclaimlarvik.no