Fair Wins and Following Seas

Some brands are born. Others have to be coaxed into existence — like stars teased into life inside a nebula.

Fair Wins Resilience is a bit of both.

After a long career in public service, Ashley Harrigan decided to start a disaster resilience consulting company. She had a name, a mission, target clients, and a long career in public service to draw on. Ashley’s vision for Fair Wins was based on a simple, yet powerful idea:

“Safety and dignity should not depend on privilege.”

Ashley had her mission, her vision, her service offering, and a homage to her father’s Navy career in the Fair Wins name. What she didn’t have was the support to bring it all together into a cohesive brand identity.

That’s where Griot Global stepped in. This is a short story about how Griot Global helped Ashley brand her first company!

Step One: Listen Before We Design

We could feel the spark of something powerful, but we didn’t want to make assumptions. 

So we started by asking Ashley a very simple question: “If Fair Wins Resilience were a person, who would that person be?” 

Branding, when done right, is as much anthropology as it is art. Griot Global’s goal was to bring Ashley’s vision to life —  not impose ours. So we observed, we asked, we listened for the story that was already there.

Her answer was very human: Empathetic. Strong. Hopeful.

That’s what we were looking for — the protagonist in a story waiting to be told. Now we had a name, a homage to a father, and a brand personality. We had what we needed to start bringing Ashley’s vision to life.

Step Two: Give the World a Little Color

Every Griot Global branding exercise begins with an archetype. An archetype is just a representation of a universal character idea. A simple example might be young Luke Skywalker as the “Everyman” and Han Solo as the “Outlaw.” Don’t let this simplicity fool you; archetypes are a powerful tool in storytelling. 

Fair Wins, as described by Ashley, would be empathetic, strong, and hopeful.

That blend became the soul of an archetype: a Visionary Caregiver that protects, inspires, and mobilizes communities.

From there, we built five brand moodboards to show Ashley what her brand might look like using five different color palettes.

The founder gravitated toward vibrant and natural tones: 

• Rising Sun Orange represents hope

• Golden Light Yellow represents optimism

• Fair Wins Teal represents renewal

• Deep Navy represents authority 

• Steel Gray represents strength 

• Warm Sand humanizes the color palette 

Typography also played a key role in shaping the brand’s personality. The font families chosen paired modern design with a bit of humanism. The font families created a strong hierarchy, confident in headlines, and approachable body text. Together, the colors and typography created the emotional foundation for everything that followed. Fair Wins now had its presence.

Step Three: A Symbol that Can Inspire Hope

With the brand’s color palette and typeface defined, we moved on to everyone’s favorite step: developing a logo.

Ashley did not want Fair Wins to be just another consulting firm. Fair Wins would carry the weight of legacy and the promise of something better. Ashley’s father is a Navy Veteran, and she has devoted her career to climate and community resilience. We wanted a logo that honored all of that.

The result was the Rising Sun.

At first glance, the design seems simple: a sun ascending over a flowing sea. But every curve and color carries meaning.

The rising sun represents hope and new beginnings — one of Fair Wins’ defining traits — while the wave pays homage to her father’s Naval service.

But if you look a bit closer, the symbolism deepens. The wave, rendered in teal, may also appear to you as a leaf. This was an intentional nod to the founder’s climate resilience work. 

That duality — service and stewardship, strength and empathy — became the visual representation of Fair Wins Resilience.

And once the logo came together, we realized we had the makings of a perfect tagline:

Together We Rise.

The tagline acknowledges the “Visionary Caregiver”  archetype, mirrors the symbolism of the rising sun, and speaks to the founder’s belief that resilience is built through community, not competition.

The logo, the colors, the typography, and the tagline together set the foundation for a cohesive brand story.

Step Four: Bringing it All Together

We built the foundation of the Fair Wins brand. All we had to do now was bring it all together into something that Ashley could actually use! 

Our final deliverables included:

• A custom logo suite (primary, stacked, standalone, black & white, and favicon)

• A suite of digital assets for reaching audiences across social media 

• A complete brand guideline with color, typography, and usage notes

Every choice — hue, font, spacing — existed to translate Ashley’s vision into a usable reality.

Step Five: The Reveal

When we delivered the full brand package, we were admittedly nervous. After all, there was a chance we had gotten Ashley’s vision all wrong. 

Then the message came:

“I’m going through it now and it’s… beautiful. The way you nailed it, sharpened the statements, the visuals. It’s like you took my brand from Blue Ivy… to Beyoncé.”

For the uninitiated, Beyoncé is the Queen Bee of Pop, and Blue Ivy is Beyoncé’s daughter. I’m not sure we could have gotten better feedback! 

Fair Wins Resilience was no longer an idea — it was an identity that sounded like Ashley, felt like Ashley, and carried her life’s work forward.

(Insert Before/After Brand Snapshot Here)

The Moral of the Story

Griot Global’s work isn’t about proving how creative we are; it’s about our client's vision. We don’t arrive with a pre-baked aesthetic and ask you to fit inside it. We listen, we translate, and we help our clients find the story that was always there. 

Fair Wins began as a whisper about equitable resilience. Now it speaks in full color: hopeful, grounded, and alive.

Because when you listen first, the story tells you exactly what to make. And the borrowing Fair Wins’ tagline: Together we rise.