- 2SLGBTQI+
Brand Design for New Brunswick’s Queer Acadian Advocacy Group: Alter Acadie
Founded in 2023, Alter Acadie is the only nonprofit advocating for queer and trans Acadians across New Brunswick.
The Alter Acadie team approached us for support in brand design after their successful first year of operations. Their team wanted to keep their original logo and build a comprehensive ‘look and feel’ for their brand, which we created and complemented with a branded suite of materials and easy-to-use templates.
CASE STUDY
Created by LeBlanc (& co.) Communications, Alter Acadie’s new brand is a fusion of Acadian culture and queer culture spanning both Acadian elements (like the flag, the star, and lobster) and unapologetically queer elements (like drag, bright colours, and beautiful photography from Annie-France Noël that shows queer Acadians living as their true and authentic selves).
Alter Acadie gave us the best brief ever – they asked for their brand to be punk, uniquely queer and Acadian, and capable of showing who they are as a “truth-telling” advocacy organization.
For some background context for anyone unfamiliar: Acadians are the French Canadian community that arrived as settlers on Canada’s east coast; were deported by the British government; and are a community with a complex but resilient story.
Alter Acadie was founded to be the provincial voice for queer Acadians in New Brunswick, which until the organization’s founding in 2023 did not previously have a body to represent them and advocate for their needs.
While Alter Acadie’s first year was successful and marked with triumphant highs, their community also faced a major blow when the New Brunswick provincial government rolling back the rights of trans youth in schools across the province. But despite – or perhaps because of – these challenges, Alter Acadie has mobilized the queer Acadian community more than ever before, and they are only just getting started.
Client Testimonial
“Working with LeBlanc (& Co.) Communications, an inclusive small business with a big impact, has been a great experience. Their evident integrity, shown through their pro bono support to the queer community during challenging times of rising hate, drew us to them. They went above and beyond with extra deliverables for us at Alter Acadie NB out of dedication and passion, truly enjoying the work. Their branding guide truly captured our vision. Thank you, Kathryn, Marie, and the team.”
Our challenge was to create a distinctly queer and Acadian brand, and to embody their request for a punk feel. To do this, we pulled colours that feel “queer” but that also held the traditional blue, white, red, and yellow of the Acadian flag. But it wasn’t enough to use Acadian colours; we created a method of “punking up” the Acadian cultural references by nodding to the traditional colours but introducing something to punk it up: a gradient, scribbles, a dash of a bright colour like green or pink, or distinctly queer photography such as drag.
Alter Acadie was created to advocate for a group that had been under-represented, queer and trans Acadians across New Brunswick, and the brand helps Alter Acadie visually communicate their story.
Alter Acadie knows that strong, authentic photography can be an important tool in social impact communications so they worked with us to art direct a photoshoot with a visionary local photographer, Annie-France Noël.
Annie’s photos are a powerful display of Alter Acadie’s message that was “on brand” and poignant for their target audiences.
