Gwent Police: a brand identity for Recognise and Respond

When Gwent Police launched a new front-line and custody procedure called Recognise and Respond, the brief was to make it land with officers as a programme worth adopting, not another internal directive. We built the brand it shipped under.

"I'm so glad we found you guys. So proud of this campaign and what you have created. It has been an absolute joy working with the Alchemy Branding team and I'm sure it won't be the last they see of me."
Emma Coopey, Detective Inspector, Gwent Police

The outcome

A complete brand identity for Recognise and Respond, the new procedure Gwent Police rolled out to front-line officers and custody teams. The identity sits alongside the force's own crest as a programme in its own right, which is the position it needed to hold.

The system now shows up across:

• Officer-facing print and signage at custody suites
• Digital briefings and internal portals
• Social posts marking the rollout
• A purpose-built officer app explaining the procedure
• Two short animations that walk officers through the changes

The challenge

Gwent Police polices five local authority areas in south-east Wales. Recognise and Respond was an internal initiative to redefine procedures for front-line and custody officers, asking serving teams to adopt a different approach in the moments that matter most.

Two things made this harder than a typical brand brief:

• The new procedure had to be introduced inside an established and trusted force brand, without competing with it.
• Officers were the audience. Anything that read as marketing-led would be ignored on sight.

The identity needed to give the procedure visible weight, signal that it was deliberate (not another memo), and be useful in the contexts officers actually work in.

Our approach

We started with a discovery session with the Gwent Police team to understand what Recognise and Respond was for, who it changed things for, and where it would need to live. From there we built the identity outward.

Key creative decisions:

• A lockup that sits alongside the Gwent Police crest, not against it. The Recognise and Respond mark stands on its own without diluting force identity.
• A high-contrast palette with a single accent. Lime against deep black so the programme reads as unmistakable across signage, digital and print.
• A directional arrow built into the ampersand. Signals action and procedure without slipping into icon clichés.
• Application across the formats officers actually use. Internal portals, custody-suite signage, briefing decks, social.

Two short animations and an officer-facing app rounded out the rollout, produced with Tiny Wizard Studio as creative partner. The app gave officers context on the procedure on the device they already carry; the animations carried the change story for briefings and onboarding.

What it does for Gwent Police

Recognise and Respond now reads as a defined programme inside the force, not a one-off directive. Officers receive it as something with intent. Custody teams reference it as a system. The brand identity holds across every channel the rollout touches, so the procedure travels with the same weight wherever it shows up.

Credits

• Client: Gwent Police
• Studio: Alchemy
• Quote: Emma Coopey, Detective Inspector, Gwent Police