Riverside Counselling Service is delighted to announce that Mio A’court’s design has been selected as the winning entry in its collaborative logo competition with The Henley College.
The competition was launched in May inviting first and second year art students to come up with a design that reflects the charity’s work and values. The winner was decided by a panel of judges from Riverside and local graphic designer Ben Hargreaves from in8.
Riverside CEO Sophie Wellings said, “Riverside has been reviewing how we profile our work externally and part of this has been a brand refresh. Our current logo feels a little bit outdated. We have also been looking at our Vision, Mission and Values and wanted these changes to coincide, to come together and to create some change in terms of how we present ourselves. We have a good relationship with Henley College and this project seemed a really good opportunity for the two organisations to come together for this competition to generate a concept that can be worked up into a logo for Riverside.”
Mio’s winning design stood out to the judges because it aligned with Riverside’s values and community orientation. Sophie added, “We felt that the simplicity of this design would work well for us as a community based charity. The bridge and river denotes Henley, but not just Henley because we also work beyond Henley. Our current logo has water in it and we wanted to hold on to this aspect of our identity. For those of a certain age, it also conjures Simon and Garfunkel’s song about a ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ which Riverside offers to our beneficiaries. We liked this underlying message.”
“We felt that it was a special piece of art made more special by it having been designed by a young person.”
Mio said, “I was quite surprised I won. I created the logo using an app on my iPad. I made a circle for the main shape and then I drew the design inside to make it a clean design. It is my first time creating a logo. At first, I started creating it using Adobe Illustrator which was quite difficult, and then I found hand drawing it was a lot easier. I’m pleased that the judges thought my design reflected who Riverside is.”
The runners-up were Erin Moses and Grace Brown.
The Henley College Principal, Simon Spearman said, “Thank you to the students for participating and creating some amazing work. It’s a great collaboration between us and Riverside Counselling.”
Special guests Henley & Thame MP, Freddie van Mierlo and Henley Mayor Councillor Ian Reissmann were invited to the showcase event along with supporters and members of the local community.
Freddie van Mierlo said, “I think Riverside are an incredibly important charity. I have regularly had talking therapies over the past 10 years. I think it’s very important that we normalise that and it is a really important part of wellbeing and good mental health. Unfortunately, the availability of talking therapies in this country is very restricted. It’s very difficult to get hold of it on the NHS. Many people are forced into the private sector and pay a lot of money. I’d like to see the charity thrive because the work they do is so important. I know having a good logo and a good marketing presence is an important part of that. It’s great to see the collaboration between a local charity and the college. These are all wonderful designs. I think if nothing else, they really prove to me that AI has got a long way to go before they can meet the creativity of the human brain. Huge congratulations to those who made the top three.”
Henley Mayor, Councillor Ian Reissman said, “Counselling and mental health is undervalued. It’s becoming more recognised as important, but it still has a bit of a Cinderella image. I also had some difficulties in my life a few years ago, and I decided to take up the offer of counselling, and it was really helpful.”
He commented, “One of the things my counsellor used to say to me was that we’re all mammals and we need to have feelings. We need to be warm; we need to feel comfortable and xafe. That’s something that my counsellor taught me to do is if you haven’t got someone to hug, hug yourself.”
The winning logo concept will now be developed by Ben at in8, who has generously offered to provide his design services free of charge.
