Templo’s brand identity for climate non-profit Casi draws on the pragmatic mark-making of hieroglyphics

Casi (Climate Action Service International) is a climate non-profit driving sustainable practices in the visual arts. Unlike a lot of the impenetrable data-driven narratives surrounding the state of our planet, Casi’s work with organisations in the creative field to reach their sustainability goals seeks to directly include the creative community, “dismantling any siloed thinking and accelerating a cultural shift where the arts actually lead the climate conversation rather than follow it,” shares Pali Palavathanan, co-founder & creative director of Templo.

An organisation that’s putting creative problem solving and visual storytelling at the forefront of tackling climate issues, Casi found it’s match in cause-led branding and design agency Templo. The new identity project presented Templo with the opportunity to step outside existing expectations surrounding what an organisation in the climate sector might look like, and the agency we’re keen to take “an unorthodox approach” says Pali, “one that deliberately sidesteps the alarmism, judgment and guilt that’s often associated with sustainability initiatives.”

What the agency instead unearthed was a warm, handcrafted look that makes the subject of sustainability look a whole lot more approachable. A key reference for the visual language of which was “the subversive simplicity of hobo hieroglyphics – the chalk markings left by people travelling through America during the Great Depression,” shares Pali. “These early forms of human mark-making are rooted in pure pragmatism: quick, direct signals that connect people to one another and to the landscape. We wanted that same grounded, human quality in the Casi identity,” he says.

When tackling the organisation’s logo, the team at Templo first tried a more traditional, reduced approach to a form inspired by hieroglyphics, but everything felt slightly too polished and flat. It wasn’t until the co-founder was on a hike with his daughter that the idea for the animated standing figure arrived: “she started playfully forming shapes with her arms and head, casting a shadow that instantly created an eye,” says Pali. “That single moment crystallised everything – a simple, ancient-style mark that celebrates our connection to the earth.”

Templo’s approach to the illustrated language surrounding Casi unfolded quite naturally from there: A series of graphic cut-outs that look deliberately imperfect and handmade, all animated with a motion language that feels human and alive. To achieve this Templo hand-animated everything in the studio, filming each other and studying natural movement to pin down the animated sequences of these Matisse-style cut outs “using traditional onion-skinning animation techniques to capture the motion”, Pali tells us.

To let this crafted approach stay centre stage in Casi’s new visual voice, the agency balanced these organic forms with a minimal typographic system using contemporary Grotesk, a deliberate choice to keep typography quiet and ordered whilst motion and mark-making remained loose and expressive “in a real human way”, ends Pali “in order to reflect the act of making art” itself.