Q has grown and evolved since it began in 2015 with just 231 members. Back then, our identity was, like Q, emerging. Over the last seven years, the community has evolved, changed and grown. Now, with over 4,500 members and long-term funding, it’s time for us to have a refreshed identity that better and more clearly reflects who we are and what we want to achieve together. With more clarity and a more engaging brand, we can get more people involved and, ultimately, have a greater impact on health and care.

Why do we need to refresh Q’s brand?

The power of a good brand lies with everyone being able to clearly, and simply, talk about why it exists. We gathered evidence, through conversations with members, partners and evaluations of Q, which showed that our current identity didn’t do this very well. And we can’t achieve what we want to achieve if our members, partners, and staff don’t know, understand, or believe in what we’re here to do.

And we can’t achieve what we want to achieve if our members, partners, and staff don’t know, understand, or believe in what we’re here to do.

We’re also aware that there are many organisations working alongside Q to support health and care improvement. Past evaluations of Q suggest that there can be confusion about how we fit in with these other organisations and identified a challenge for us to differentiate our offer to the sector, to help us achieve the impact we want to have as a community.

How did we create our new identity?

Over the last year, we’ve been working with members, stakeholders and an external agency to develop a refreshed identity for Q. We’ve reviewed our look and feel. But, more importantly, we’ve also explored how we sound and what we say. This has meant asking ourselves fundamental questions about who we are.

We used the principles of co-design and a collaborative approach to explore what it means to be a Q member. From our exploratory work together, we developed, tested and iterated new ways to talk about the community. We created a statement to help us understand our position, with a set of principles for us to base our new identity. This was used to develop and test a new visual identity. A huge thank you to the many members and partners who took part in workshops, our survey, and testing. Without you, we wouldn’t have been able to successfully shape our new identity.

Our new brand is not just about a new logo

For a long time, the Q logo has been the main way that people have linked the work that we do to the community. However, evidence from our members and partners shows there’s a real opportunity for us to build our identity – visually and verbally – beyond this. We want our new brand to help us to stand out, inspire members, and elevate the diverse voices in the community – whatever part of Q’s work people see. It’ll help us bring the community to life.

Together, to improve health and care

The principles that sit behind the new brand, shaped by members, are:

• We are human. We speak to people as people. Everything we do is based on bringing individuals together towards a common aim.
• We are equals. We’re all here with varied experiences, contexts and backgrounds, but with equal standing.​
• We are pragmatic. We’re focused on solving problems. We want to welcome, share and learn together while getting things done.​

We want Q to be an open, welcoming place – a home – for people doing improvement work across health and care. We want members to feel supported and inspired to continue improvement work that makes sustainable changes across the sector.

Equity, diversity and inclusion are an important part of Q and our future. We’ve worked hard to put accessible communication approaches at the heart of our new identity, to make sure that the brand is inclusive and welcomes diversity across all our work.

We’re excited to share the new identity with you – it’s almost ready! It’s strong, fresh, confident and inviting. Look out for changes happening over the next few months. Some will be subtle, and some will be more obvious. In June, we will be switching to the new visual identity on the website, our emails and our Twitter account. And yes, this will include a new logo. We hope you like it!

This isn’t the end

With a brand, the work is never really done. It’s not a static job. Now that we’ve created our new identity, in the spirit of improvement, we’ll continue to test, learn, and change. We’ll look at what works well and what we can make better. We’ll iterate and adapt it. The brand will grow and evolve with us.

When it has launched, we’d love to hear what you think.