Welcome!
We are a professional creative team, aligned and ready to support your mission for animals.
We’re not just any design studio – the folks on our team have been embedded in the vegan and animal protection movement for many years, and we uniquely understand your organization’s needs. We’re also professional designers who have worked in various design industries for combined decades of experience. The majority of our team is made of generous volunteers who are donating their time and expertise to this cause. We are familiar with the design landscape within and outside of the movement, and we’re ready to help you in the fight for a better world for animals. We can’t wait to support you and your mission!
What We Provide
Free design services for nonprofits
If you’re working to create a better world for animals, we’re here to help. All of our services are completely free of charge for nonprofit organizations.
Extensive creative consultation
Alongside our services, you will receive thoughtful consultation depending on your unique needs. We also provide consultation services independent of design services, if you just want advice.
What we don’t do
We can’t currently offer services outside of what’s listed below. If you need support with a custom project or something else, you can still reach out to us for a consultation or a referral.
What We Need From You
Invest in the process
Our work with you is very much a collaboration. The pieces we create will ultimately represent you and your work – so you should be an active participant in the process to ensure that they’re authentic to you.
Get curious, ask questions!
We’re here to not only provide service – we also feel it’s critical to empower you with education. We love talking about this stuff! As questions pop up, don’t hesitate to ask.
Be kind & patient
Our designers pour a lot of care and passion into this work. We will provide a high level of professionalism, kindness, flexibility, and understanding to you along the way – we appreciate the same in return. We’re all on the same team! 💜
Important Requirements
No matter which design services you’re receiving from us, these requirements apply. These are being implemented in 2025 to protect our design team and respect other organizations who are patiently waiting for our help.
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We want to ensure that the entire team is unified on decisions throughout the design process. The following is required to assure that the feedback provided is the official consensus of your organization, and will avoid significant delays.
Feedback needs to be provided by a key decision-maker at your organization (i.e. the Executive Director, or a Communications Director who has been granted authority by the ED, etc.)
If there are multiple decision-makers at your organization, please agree internally on your feedback before providing it to us. We’re more than happy to have a quick call and discuss concerns, of course, if there are conflicting opinions within your team! Just let us know.
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Our free services are in high demand! We appreciate your understanding and cooperation to keep these design projects moving swiftly. We pride ourselves on providing a high level of communication and service! But we can’t do this alone – we need your input.
When we send files for your review, please provide feedback promptly – this could take the form of a call, or an email, depending on your communication preferences. A quick response to say “We’re looking at it and will get back to you on X date” goes a long way!
If we don’t receive a response within 3 weekdays, we will send a follow-up reminder. If we still don’t hear from you, we will send another reminder on the 5th weekday, with a warning.
If we don’t hear from you after 10 weekdays (2 work weeks), we will be forced to cease work on the project. At this point, we will email you letting you know that the project has ended, and send all relevant working files created so far, so you can resume the project with another designer as needed.
We are generally very flexible, but in the past, long delays in response have caused a pile-up of work, which we’d like to avoid – to benefit you as well as our team!
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We understand that, even with the protections above, things happen!
At the start of the project, please provide a trusted back-up contact that we can reach out to if the main contact is unavailable for any reason.
If a key decision-maker is out sick or there is an emergency that prevents you from sharing timely feedback, let us know promptly and we will discuss accommodation options.
Similarly, if there are delays on our side due to illness or emergencies, we will keep you informed!
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Together, at the start of any project, we will do our best to define the project’s scope as thoroughly as possible. While it’s highly common to discover new project needs along the way, we try to limit scope creep to protect our designers from abuse.
Examples of acceptable scope creep:
Together we discover new requirements for a website that will render the website unusable if they can’t be implemented
Receiving audience testing feedback that causes the project to pivot beyond what we expected initially
Examples of unacceptable scope creep:
Adding significant text/additional pages to a document after design has already begun
Changing all of the website’s text after design has begun or been completed, and expecting it to be redesigned/remade
Significantly changing logo design direction on a whim after the process is far along (not based on new critical information/testing results)
Requests for starting over after a project has been completed or is significantly progressed
These are just examples – there are many ways a project can expand in scope. If the scope creeps in an unacceptable way, in order to protect our volunteer designers and respect those on our wait list, we will not be able to accommodate.
Our Processes
Branding Process
We currently offer multiple levels of branding support, depending on your needs and our availability. We have extremely limited capacity for the highest effort options (Comprehensive Rebrands, Brand Expansions), and reserve those for clients with large reach and/or extremely high design needs.
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This service is a full-picture review of your entire brand and its effectiveness, using your brand’s history and future goals to guide our feedback to ensure it’s as useful as possible for you.
We review and provide feedback on:
Your brand as a whole: Observing how it currently functions across all applications, determining if there's any improvements that could be made to increase functionality or improve audience perception
Any sub-brand strategies and the logic behind them
Your website's UX, checking for usability best practices
Outputs:
A Miro board with copious notes and strategies for improvement.
You can use the Miro board to guide your next steps – whether that’s working with us on improvements, working with another designer, or making updates in-house.
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If your logo needs a little love, we can help bring things into alignment and improve its quality significantly via simplifying, straightening, applying geometry, or other techniques. If your logo is also missing critical orientations, file types, or colorways, we can also provide those.
This service has the same process and outputs at the Core Brand Package below.
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This option is ideal for organizations who are first starting out, and need a solid, high-quality brand base to get up and running. The brand can be expanded later, but for now, let’s create a solid foundation and avoid costly mistakes!
Process:
Consultation: We’ll chat to understand your target audience, desired brand personality traits, and unique preferences.
Logo drafts, Round 1: We will provide logo 2-3 options depending on what was discussed.
Feedback Round 1: You will provide feedback and narrow in on one option to move forward with. This could be final as-is if we got it right, or we can complete more rounds of changes.
Logo edits, Round 2: Edits completed to one option.
Feedback Round 2: Minor edits
Logo edits, Round 3: Edits completed to one option.
Final check: One last approval before the package is finalized
Final: Logo package exported, files provided
Outputs:
Streamlined brand guide (which details the following):
Logo in various colors, orientations, and file types
Color palette
Coordinating typography
Social media avatar, browser favicon
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If you need help thinking through the foundation of your branding, including things like: who your audiences are, your brand’s personality, your long-term brand goals, how to measure success, and more, we have varying levels of brand strategy support that can plug into our other branding services. Coming up with your organization’s name can also be a beast on its own – we can provide general guidance on how you can come up with your own name, or if you’re really struggling, we can also assist in name generation. This is a limited service and it is not included in every brand consultation we provide at this time. The process and outputs of this service vary depending on the organization’s unique needs.
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Often, organizations use a Core package similar to above just to get up and running – but as they grow, their design needs grow proportionately, creating the need for additional design tools in their toolkit. If you have solid core branding, but you need a little more personality or functionality, we can help to expand your brand.
Process:
Brand Strategy: If you haven’t already, we will go through the brand strategy process (below) to determine the best approach for this visual expansion.
Brand Expansion Proposal: Based on what we discussed, we will put together a presentation of ideas, including different expansion elements (chosen from below) which would be useful tools for your brand.
Feedback Round 1: During the presentation call, there will be an opportunity for immediate feedback. You will also have the opportunity to review the proposal more closely. After this review, provide approval or any requests for edits via email.
Round of Edits: If edits were requested, we will apply the changes and send the updated presentation via email for review.
Feedback Round 2: Review and provide approval/feedback via email.
Finalization: Brand Guide, Asset Export: Based on the decisions made in the proposal, we will finalize the brand guide. We’ll provide the brand guide files as well as any related brand asset files. The guide and assets can then be used for work on other applications (such as social media templates, the website, and more).
Potential outputs:
Detailed brand guide (which details the above Core brand elements, as well as anything additional below):
Sub-branding
Illustrations and icon sets
Photography styles
Typography as art
Patterns, textures, or borders
Unique elements and more!
For more details on what might be included in these packages, please see here.
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If your brand has been around for a long time, it can be difficult to navigate a large change like this. We have extensive experience with handling larger rebranding projects, whether it’s a full overhaul or a more gentle refresh that maintains the legacy of the brand you’ve worked hard to establish.
The size of the output will vary depending on the specific needs of the brand, but it typically is a collection of many moving parts including a new brand strategy, core brand package, and expanded elements.
Process:
Brand Assessment
Brand Strategy & Naming
Core Branding – In addition to the usual logo design process described above, we will add a round of Audience Testing to gain valuable feedback from your existing audience members, and any new audiences you are looking to break into.
Expanded Elements
Outputs:
Brand assessment
Detailed brand guide (which details the following):
Core brand elements (detailed above)
Expanded elements (detailed above)
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Paired with a brand service above, we can also help set you up for design success inside your Canva team’s account. We will set everything up in your brand kit so you’re never left guessing about fonts, colors, or files. (p.s. Did you know that Canva’s Pro plan is free for nonprofits?)
Website Process
We currently offer multiple tiers of website services, in partnership with our sister organization, Vegan Hacktivists (VH), which provides the technical piece of the puzzle.
To help you get started, for all Squarespace sites we work on, we pay for the first year of Squarespace fees at the lowest level and support you in acquiring or transferring your domain name. After 12 months you will be responsible for the costs of hosting the website. If you’re curious why Squarespace is our website platform of choice, read this post on our Knowledge Hub!
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In this service, we will create a site using content that you provide, and design the site for you. This is not a fully advanced website design with custom code, but the result will still be a clean, professional site with your branded colors, fonts, existing logo, and a few select custom design elements depending on the content.
Process:
You provide site text, any specific images you want, and any existing branding.
We provide a website content review – this ensures a higher quality final result. If there are improvements needed, we will propose adjustments to the site map or content for your review.
Feedback Round 1: If we make any improvement suggestions, we’ll send them your way for review and approval before beginning with the site design.
NOTE: At this time, content should be final before proceeding. Any significant changes made beyond this point will need to be completed by you after the site is complete, not Violet Studios, as it will disrupt the design process.
We set up a Squarespace site and begin with the homepage design for approval
Feedback Round 2: You review the homepage design, and provide feedback on the design style and direction. We make any minor changes to the design for approval before moving forward with the other pages.
Once the homepage is approved, we move on to the rest of the website and apply consistent styling.
Feedback Round 3: You review the remaining pages, and provide feedback if there are any major mistakes.
We will onboard you as an Administrator on the website and send resources on how to maintain your own website going forward. If there are any changes you want to make to the website (such as minor text changes) before it goes live, you can complete them now.
VH ensures the website is compliant (i.e. there is a cookie banner and privacy policy, etc).
When your website is ready to publish, VH helps acquire or transfer your domain name, pays for the first year of the Basic plan, and publishes the website
Ownership of the website is transferred to you
Output: A solid Squarespace website created by Violet Studios & VH. The website’s design will be streamlined and elevated, but will not contain a significant amount of customization or custom code.
Examples of Streamlined Design Squarespace Sites:
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Advanced Design Squarespace Site
In this service, we provide the same support and process as the Streamlined Design Squarespace Site above, but with a much higher level of design effort. This service is often paired with a Brand Expansion as it likely involves the creation of several new visual design tools for your branding. We are limited in our ability to offer these to organizations, and reserve this higher level of support for websites with large reach or complex brand needs.
Process: Same as the Simple Design process above, but with more opportunities for developing the brand through a Brand Expansion with additional feedback rounds.
Output: An advanced Squarespace website created by Violet Studios & VH. This may include a significant amount of design customization. Custom code may be included if you have chosen to upgrade to a higher payment plan on Squarespace.
Examples of Advanced Design Squarespace Sites:
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Rarely, for high-impact projects we can provide quality UI/UX design in Figma with the intention of you finding a developer on your own for implementation. If you have a need for UI/UX or Product Design consultation, we can connect you with someone at Vegan Hacktivists to advise.
Motion/Animation Process
We can help with light touch animation services like logo animations and intros, as well as higher impact motion tasks such as animated videos with custom illustrations and voiceovers.
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We can animate your logo to elevate your branding and give it that extra oomph of personality. This could include a looping logo gif for your website, or a more interesting animated video intro for things like social media reels, videos, and presentations.
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Animation is not just an animated sales-pitch presentation – it’s storytelling. With the creative freedom of animation you can give emotion and life to cold facts or hard numbers. Whether you are looking for a CTA or an educational piece, we will find a way to relate to your target audience and speak to them directly.
We can work alongside you to create wow-worthy, custom illustrated and animated videos. This is a highly collaborative service that requires both you and Violet Studios to contribute – the strategy, script, voiceover, and design style will all be thoughtfully considered to ensure that it’s right for your audience. Depending on the feedback times and complexity, it usually takes at least a month for a ~90 second animation.
Process:
Brief: We also would love to learn about your goal for this animation and what you imagine the end result to be. It is important to know who the animation is going to be for, and which platform you are going to share the video on. We can provide guidance on how to ensure that this video reaches the right people and is worth the time and effort.
Script: The first step into making a successful animation is a rock solid script. A script is best written in collaboration. You know the best way to describe your message or service, and we will help you to find the best way to translate that to a concise and visually stunning story. If you’re drafting the script yourself, keep it clear and concise – not everything needs to be said, and some things can be said visually. We will add visual descriptions of what we imagine to happen in the scene.
Feedback Round 1: Ensuring that the script is as solid as possible at this point is critical for the animation process, as changes will cascade through every part of the process. If you wrote the script yourself, we will provide feedback through a review, and can conduct some rounds of revisions to be 100% confident before moving forward.
Style frames: Before we start animating, we need to find the right visual style to speak to your intended audience. To do this, we will take one or two shots from the script and make a fully designed still image. If you already have a visual style in mind we’d love to see examples of what you like (or don’t like) and will gladly refer to these in our process. If you’re completely unsure, we can provide some examples before dedicating time to creating custom style frames.
Feedback Round 2: Investing time here is also important, as the style needs to be fully confirmed before work can continue. Once you are 100% satisfied with the proposed look we will continue to the next step.
Storyboard: We will create quick sketches to go along with every step in the script to get a good idea of the complete flow of the story.
Feedback Round 3: Depending on how the project is progressing, there is an opportunity for feedback at this stage. If you’d rather leave it to us, we can skip this feedback round and head straight into the next step.
Voiceover: If a voiceover is needed for this project, this is the time we hit record! We will need to discuss with you who will be doing the voiceover – whether someone on the team has the right voice and skills, or if we will need to hire a professional or find a volunteer. We will consider what the right voice and tone sounds like for this script.
Timing test: Now, we will fully design each scene from the story-board as still images and compile that with the voice-ver for a first glimpse of what the full animation is going to look like.
Feedback Round 4: Changes to the voiceover at this point may accrue additional costs if it was supplied by a professional. Feedback at this stage should be focused on any visual scene adjustments rather than script or voice. This is the last opportunity to speak up – after animation begins, adjustments will not be possible due to time constraints.
Animation: Now that all the scenes and the voice-over are approved, it’s time for us to get moving and animate all the scenes!
Music and SoundFX: For simpler videos, we can do SoundFX in house and use stock FX if needed. If the project requires more advanced sound work, we can connect you with a sound engineer in our network. With most of the animation done, the sound engineer will use their expertise to see if there are any actions that would really spring to life with some subtle sound effects.
Editing and Compositing: Compositing is the process of putting all elements together. This is also the time where we work on adding all the final touches, like color corrections and lighting.
Feedback Round 5: Here you get to see the full version in its full glory – you can give feedback on movement, transitions, and music. The content of the scenes will have already been established in previous feedback rounds, so they cannot be changed at this time.
Final Version: We’re done! The animation is ready to be set free in the wild. We are happy to offer advice to help ensure that your intended audience will see your story.
Social Media Support
We offer customized social media training and templates to support your online animal advocacy.
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Social media is a powerful tool to get your message seen, heard, and acted upon. That’s why we're here to equip you with the knowledge and tools to create content that resonates with your audience and helps you achieve your goals.
Learn how to create effective social media content by understanding user expectations, applying best practices for copywriting, and optimizing performance with data. Share your goals or concerns and receive tailored advice to enhance your strategy.
What we do:
Provide social media training
Review your social media accounts and offer suggestions
Answer questions or provide insights based on inquiries shared before the call
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These templates are built in Canva, which is our recommended platform for creating social media visuals. Canva provides free pro accounts for nonprofits, so be sure to take advantage of that offer!
This service is usually completed in addition to the consultation and training service above, not as a standalone service, to ensure that the templates will truly be useful for you, tailored to your needs, and work for you in the long term.
Process:
Complete social media training.
Let us know which 3-5 post types you will need – these should be the types of posts you will be using most often. You can use these as a base to create additional templates in the future as needed. We will also provide a “middle” and “closing/CTA” slide for carousel-style posts.
Provide existing brand assets, if your brand was created by someone other than us.
We will create and design the post templates in Canva using placeholder copy
Feedback Round: At this point, you can provide light feedback for us to make adjustments that you are unable to make on your own. For small adjustments, we encourage you to become familiar with Canva and feel confident making those adjustments yourself, to help create familiarity with the tool.
Once the templates are approved, there are two ways to transfer ownership to you:
You can click File>Make a Copy for each template, which will duplicate them and add them to your team’s Canva, making you the owner.
You can add us as a member on your Canva Team, which will allow us to transfer a folder of the templates to your Canva Team with one click. After this transfer is complete, you can remove us as a member.
After receiving the training and the tools, you’re now fully ready to create your own posts!
Document Process
We provide document designs for high-impact documents, especially those that are being used to fundraise for your organization, including Strategic Plans and other donor docs. We’re also available to help with high-impact reports that are public facing and further our shared mission for animals.
At this time, we only provide document designs via Canva because we’ve found it to be the best solution for our clients, giving them the power and control to edit text into the future, and reuse the designed elements for future documents. Canva provides free pro accounts for nonprofits, so be sure to take advantage of that offer!
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Process:
You provide final document content, and we discuss the design direction.
If we are unclear on the direction, we will complete a few sample pages for your approval before completing the whole document. If the direction is clear, we will simply complete the document in one pass.
Feedback Round: At this time, you can provide feedback on any visual improvements needed. Changing text at this time is not allowed.
Once the design is approved, we suggest making a copy of the Canva file to transfer full ownership of the file to your own team’s Canva account. From here, you can make any edits on your own (such as text changes or image swaps), and export it as a PDF for sharing when you’re ready.
If necessary, we can aid with creating a print-ready version – just let us know.
Frequently Asked Questions
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If you meet these requirements, you are eligible to apply:
You are not for profit (Note: If your official nonprofit status isn’t yet finalized, that’s ok.)
Animals are at the core of your mission
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No, we only offer free services, and we don’t plan to offer paid services at this time. We are fully nonprofit, and our mission is to provide the highest quality service at no cost, making it fully accessible for organizations of all sizes. If you would like to find a freelance designer, or otherwise are unable to get free services from us, you can always reach out to someone in our network. We can also refer you 1:1 to a freelancer in our network that we believe to be a good fit. Just ask!
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We are supported by generous donors and grant-making organizations who want animal advocates to be provided with our services at no cost. If you are interested in supporting our work, please reach out to chat or visit our donate page.
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Part of our mission is to set you up for success – not everyone can afford to have an in-house designer or retain the services of a freelance designer long-term. Depending on your situation, we are more than happy to help train you on how to use the materials we provide, including using things like brand guides and Canva kits. However, even with this setup, you might have more future design needs than you can handle – that’s where our referral list comes in.
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Generally, we are always available for advice! In the long-term, we will be available for guidance if you have questions. We’re here to help!
You may submit additional requests for design services anytime. However, depending on our current bandwidth and the number of other requests we receive, we may choose to prioritize organizations who have not yet received our free services – to spread the love, and be fair.