Feminist Generation

A New Organization

When Young Feminist Party and Feminist Front merged into a new, unified organization, there was both excitement and pressure to create an identity that reflected not just a name change but an entirely new era of feminist organizing. I had been working with Young Feminist Party already, so when the merger came together, I was tasked with leading the design of a complete rebrand. It wasn’t simply about designing a new logo—it was about translating our collective vibe, energy, and values into a brand system that felt alive, powerful, and unmistakably our own.

From the very first conversations, there was a clear sense of what the identity needed to feel like. We all agreed that it had to be fresh and unapologetically punk, pulling directly from the riot grrrl feminist movement of the 70s and its legacy of zines, posters, and DIY culture. We wanted the brand to have a scrapbook energy, something that carried the marks of imperfection and human touch, while still being clean and legible enough to work across digital platforms and professional communications. The vibe we were chasing was spunky and powerful, rebellious but intentional, grassroots while still polished enough to be taken seriously by national partners and funders.

Initial Team-wide Moodboard

Building the Typographic Voice

That spirit shaped every decision in the design process. Typography became one of the first elements where the riot grrrl energy came through. I built the system around Decalotype, a bold, geometric sans-serif that can be pushed to extremes for big, declarative headlines. Its heavy weight gave us the power and presence we needed for protest-style graphics. Rather than relying on one typeface alone, I layered in Inter as a versatile, highly legible workhorse font for body copy and flexible layouts. The contrast between Decalotype’s punch and Inter’s neutrality gave us range. To keep that raw, zine-inspired edge, I introduced JetBrains Mono into the system. Its monospaced, typewriter feel evoked the handmade, the photocopied, the “scrapbooked together” ethos we wanted. Together, these three typefaces created a typographic voice that could be loud and in-your-face one moment and quietly functional the next.

Shaping the Color Palette

Color followed a similar path of balancing chaos and clarity. As a team, we kept coming back to neon brights and high-contrast tones—shades that felt electric, rebellious, and in-your-face. Acid lime, chrome blue, and electric violet became our “riot colors,” the ones that popped most aggressively in digital and print. To ground them, I built the palette out with deep violet, forest green, and a true charcoal black. This way, we could dial the system up to full anarchic brightness when we wanted energy, or mute it down to something steadier when we needed seriousness. The green—eventually named FG Neon—emerged as our signature, tying together the visuals with a color that was both accessible and striking. The palette itself ended up carrying the contradiction we wanted: youthful and playful, but grounded in history and purpose.

Exploring the Logo

The logo was one of the most iterative parts of the process. Early sketches played with stencil textures, geometric forms, and bold typographic treatments. I explored versions that leaned heavily on type, versions with boxed-in protest-stamp aesthetics, and variations that brought the initials “FG” into focus. Each draft was an attempt to capture the duality of the brand: punk rawness on one hand, organizational clarity on the other.

Through testing these directions with the team, one motif kept rising to the surface: the star. Rough, hand-drawn, and a little imperfect, the star carried both the grassroots energy of screen printing and hand drawn signs and the optimism of spotlighting youth voices. Once paired with the type system, the star achieved the balance we were looking for—it felt like something you could stencil on a wall or scrawl on a sign, but it also had the authority to stand as a national brand mark. Those early explorations were essential; by pushing wide in every direction, we could distill down to the logo that carried the most authenticity.

Developing the Graphic Language

Once the foundational elements were in place, I began experimenting with how type, imagery, and texture could come together. Halftone effects became essential, not just for their punk aesthetic but because they connected today’s activism to a long legacy of protest print culture. Black-and-white photographs of marches and rallies, processed into gritty halftones, became the backdrop for bold type. Rough brush strokes and jagged star patterns created motion and urgency. Big, all-caps headlines stacked vertically gave the work a cadence that felt like a chant. The designs didn’t just look like posters; they sounded like protest.

A Collaborative Process

What made this process most powerful was how collaborative it was. The rebrand wasn’t me designing in a vacuum—it was me absorbing the energy of our team, who were organizers first and foremost. Their language, their slogans, and their sense of urgency shaped every visual decision. When they said something needed to feel louder, I leaned harder into the bold weights. When they wanted something to feel grassroots, I layered in halftone photos and textures that looked rough around the edges. When they needed materials to be flexible for chapters across the country, I designed modular templates that could handle local event details without losing brand consistency.

Outcome

In the end, the Feminist Generation rebrand captured something rare: a brand identity that feels as if it was built on the streets, even when it’s polished enough for boardrooms. It brought together the DIY power of the riot grrrl movement with the needs of a national organization, creating a look that was both rebellious and strategic. Most importantly, it gave young feminists across the country a visual language that reflected their own energy—a brand that looked like the movement they were already building, now unified under one name.