A Living Logo to Mark Innocence

A stroke of the pen can send them to prison for years and destroy their lives. And now a stroke of the brush can mark their freedom and redemption.

For decades, the wrongfully convicted had found an invaluable ally in advocacy group Innocence Canada, and in 2016 those exonorees became a lasting part of the organization when each one, or a loved one, painted a thick line that became part of the organization's new logo.

The nonprofit's new brand identity, designed pro-bono by agency KBS Toronto, was a collection of 21 brush strokes representing each prisoner whose conviction had been overturned by Innocence Canada's efforts. 

But unlike most logos, which are designed to endure as if carved from stone, this was created to be a “Living Logo,” with one more stroke added each time another person's wrongful conviction is thrown out. At the 2017 Epica Awards, the jury awarded the adaptive design the coveted Design Grand Prix.

 

An ever-changing logo is ambitious for any organization, but it was especially optimistic for Innocence Canada in 2016, when the 23-year-old group faced the very real chance of severe scaleback or closure due to dwindling funds. The logo and new brand identity as Innocence Canada (the group had long been known as the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted, or AIDWYC) seemed to come as the group's fate was already sealed.

But true to its mission, Innocence Canada defied the odds and escaped its own seemingly inevitable sentence. 

In December 2016, the government of Ontario and the Law Society of Upper Canada pledged $900,000 to Innocence Canada over three years—the group's first financial commitment from the government.

“I don't think all of that would have happened if we hadn't gotten some public attention,” Amanda Carling, an Innocence Canada lawyer, said in the project's case study. “Changing the name and having a brand identity was key, absolutely key to having that public support.”

And key to that brand identity was the creative team at KBS Toronto. 

Art director Jessica Carter and copywriter Kate Thorneloe developed the logo concept as part of Innocence Canada's rebranding. Early in the process, they decided the logo should be adaptive to reflect the growing tally of successes in the organization's future – no matter how dim that future seemed at the time.

“It was always adaptive,” Thorneloe says. “We always wanted to have these tallies that did this dual job of looking like prison bars but also communicating, internally and to the world, how much they've done as an organization.”

Soon after the concept was created, Innocence Canada hosted Wrongful Conviction Day – a perfect opportunity to have the exonorees and their loved ones help paint the logo by hand.

“Each individual brush was customized for each exonoree,” designer Carter says. “We had their name and date of exoneration engraved on the brush handle.”

Creating the logo’s brush strokes was an emotional moment for all involved, and for those whose lives had been redeemed by Innocence Canada, it brought up a complex range of emotions.

“They’re all so different, with such different histories and such different relationships with their own exonerations and experiences, so people had a really different reaction to it,” Thorneloe says.  

She remembers specifically how Maria Shepherd, who painted the final brush stroke, saw the brush stroke as a vital moment in her decades-long ordeal.

“She felt a lot of closure doing it,” Thorneloe says. “She felt really empowered and proud to be part of it.”

Shepherd had pleaded guilty in 1992 to manslaughter after the death of her 3-year-old daughter the year before. At the time, she was facing what seemed like an inevitable conviction due to the testimony of a pathologist who said the child's death was due to one or more blows of “significant force”, according to reports in The Globe and Mail newspaper. 

However, the pathologist’s findings in this and other cases was later brought into question, and he was stripped of his medical license in 2011. Shepherd had served a 2-year prison sentence for manslaughter, but her nightmare endured many years after due to the perception of her guilt in her own daughter's death (which experts now say was likely due to an undiagnosed medical condition). 

“For her, it was a big moment,” Carter recalls from the brush stroke ceremony at Wrongful Conviction Day. “The Canadian government never really declares anyone as innocent, so for Maria Shepherd, it was a moment to finally say, ‘I am innocent’.”

An overturned conviction can take years and countless hours of work by Innocence Canada, so a year after the Living Logo’s debut, it remained at 21 brush strokes. And while reprinting the logo on all materials will pose some logistical challenges, Thorneloe describes it as “a good problem to have.” In fact, she says, “we're hoping to add one soon.”