The City of Welland has officially launched its new, award-winning brand, as judged by members of the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals.

The Hermes Creative Award gold-winning new brand is available across all City social media platforms and internal corporate assets, complemented with a redesigned website. Rebranding fleet, signs, and other large-scale assets are happening with a coordinated, phased-in approach.

“To say this is exciting is an understatement; it’s been a long journey going through the many phases of this branding effort,” said Marc MacDonald, corporate communications manager. “We know it will take some time for the community to recognize and even embrace the new brand, but once implemented, residents will see the unique opportunity to be bold and trailblazing in telling our exceptional story as a municipality.”

Along with the rebranding process, which began in December 2021, the website, www.welland.ca, has been a steady work in progress for more than a year, reimagining how information is presented and thoroughly analyzing the site map to reduce redundancy and simplify searching.

“Every page of the site was reviewed and rewritten with a consistent tone, style, and approach to information presentation,” said MacDonald. “Of course, the clean visuals are the immediate changes visitors will notice first, but we encourage everyone to take some time to get familiar with the new framework. The desire for a pleasing, user-friendly experience was a guiding tenet throughout this project.”

The City’s engagement platform, Engage Welland, hosts project-specific pages for reviewing the complete brand process (www.engagewelland.ca/rebrand) and the new website (www.engagewelland.ca/website). Feedback about the website can be shared here for staff to consider and incorporate as needed.