The Scottish Women’s Autism Network (SWAN), is an autistic-led charity, supporting autistic women, girls, and non-binary people across Scotland since 2012. Lacking a cohesive brand and online presence beyond Facebook, SWAN enlisted Field to develop a brand and website embodying accessibility, inclusivity, and community.

SWAN’s website needed to serve as both a resource and education hub for autistic women and non-binary people and their non-autistic allies. It aimed to provide clear information about the organisation’s mission, services, and ongoing initiatives. The brand and website had to be autistic-led and community-focused. Most importantly, the design needed to prioritise accessibility for the autistic community, ensuring intuitive navigation, ease of use, and inclusivity for individuals with sensory sensitivities and diverse communication needs.

To fully understand SWAN’s requirements, we began by organising a series of workshops with key stakeholders. These sessions focused on identifying key audience personas, defining the preferred visual style and color palette, and addressing potential accessibility challenges—such as sensory overload and text readability. We also explored strategies for designing with accessibility and inclusivity in mind.

The insights gained from these workshops guided us in creating a brand and website that adhered to best practices for accessible design while meeting SWAN’s specific needs. For example, we recognised that some users prefer text-based content, while others engage more with videos and animations. To support individuals sensitive to sensory overload, we streamlined navigation and selected a color palette that balances vibrancy with reduced visual strain.

Field developed a brand identity for SWAN that takes inspiration from individuality, graphic shapes, and organic forms, with elements of playful texture in the lettering and illustration. The supporting font in the strapline is a rounded and friendly sans serif. The illustrative style shows a swan at peace, resting and in harmony with itself, while at the same time representing a confident and strong presence. The swan is forming a complete circle as a symbol of a safe and protective space. The brand typography combines a strong typeface that conveys confidence, contrasted with a softer supporting font to create balance. The rounded secondary font complements the softer, illustrative elements of the brand while the stronger hero font adds a bold, graphic element. Instead of relying on lots of photography or intricate icons, the brand uses characterful and dynamic patterns to illustrate some of the more abstract ideas that SWAN might address in their content. The patterns also have the potential to animate, creating soft, fluid motion that will visually engage an audience.

For the social media rollout, we wanted to convey a strong sense of identity, using the soft colour palette and supporting patterns to create eye-catching, informative and engaging content that will help to deliver SWAN’s expertise to a younger, wider audience. For the more corporate documents we produced, the brand brings a sense of personality to more professional documents such as presentations. Information is presented in an engaging, confident visual style.

The launch of the new brand and website received overwhelmingly positive feedback from the Scottish Autism Network’s community and beyond. It has significantly improved user engagement and visitor interaction and has increased website dwell time. Additionally, it meets AA-level compliance under WCAG guidelines, setting a benchmark for accessible design in the charity sector.