Black news organizations historically played a vital role in serving Black audiences, acting as crucial arteries to freedom, representation, culture, and entertainment. Diversity failures and decline of local news—including legacy Black newspapers—in the mainstream media have denied fair representation of Black people in America, and given rise to mis- and disinformation in Black communities. Capital B was created to center Black voices and provide communities a reliable way to stay informed.
Brand Positioning
Brand Identity
Tagline
Logo Design
Video Content
Digital Content
Capital B is a first-of-its-kind nonprofit news organization for Black Americans, which combines local service reporting, national investigative journalism, and community engagement—at scale.
When people who have been historically and systematically left outside of the primary power structures gain access to accurate, timely and relevant information, the power dynamic shifts. We knew we had to deliver a brand identity across a range of assets that lived up to this huge responsibility. We tapped into the Capital B founders’ conviction that they had to accurately reflect and engage with the communities it hoped to serve.
In crafting a new brand identity, our logo and color palette were developed to be expressive and urgent, while creating a sense of taking and holding space. The B in the wordmark is bold, heavy and wide, which is well-suited for customization, and gives the opportunity for the B to become a sandbox for different textures, patterns and photography centering Black people, as well as alternate colors. This versatility reflects the dynamism and diversity of the Black American experience and the Black Americans experiencing it, and in the animated version of the logo, forward motion and growth is conveyed.
Misinformation has for too long disproportionately affected Black communities. This is why our team focused on building trust and elevating the importance of journalism while defining a consistent identity and voice that resonated with newsrooms and Black people across the country. Bypassing lofty terms, our new tagline was direct, expressing that this differentiated model of local and national reporting is “News We Need.” We helped distill this in a launch video used at the Capital B launch celebrations in February 2022.
With Capital B being an ongoing source of news and important information for Black communities, our brand identity has been expanded to add materials that could be streamlined and repurposed, such as for kicking off their first virtual summit with an event-specific logo and streamlined textural backgrounds.
