Tuyo Media Branding

for Tuyo Media

Tuyo’s mission is to help build a more equitable press corps, capable of amplifying the voices and perspectives of communities and regions underrepresented in journalism. The cornerstone of Tuyo’s work is a global media camp—a 10-day journalism school—to sharpen skills, facilitate mentorship, and produce high-quality reporting. Their immersive, cross-cultural boot camps breed lasting personal and professional bonds that build connective tissue across borders. The bootcamp model stabilizes the focus of Tuyo’s curriculum to instill ethics and develop strategies to improve how media covers populations that are not well or accurately represented. They envision a media that is closer—by geography, class, race, and experience—to those it serves.

Resident Voices Media

Tuyo was founded by a collaborative of 22 renowned journalists from around the world. Previously, Resident Voices Media, our goal was to enrich their vision and create a brand for a journalism education organization with firm roots in social justice that inspires funders and applicants. We wanted a name that captured one core idea - one to one mentorship to foster local ownership over local stories. We settled on Tuyo Media.

Tuyo is short, jargonfree, fun to say and memorable. In Spanish, Tuyo means “Yours” which captures their central mission as an organization - owning the concept of local reporting. If you split Tuyo in half you get tu y yo – you and me, a nod to the deep one-to-one mentor/mentee relationship that is an integral part of their program. Spanish is an authentic part of the organization’s origin story as their first pilot program landed in Mexico and Central/South America are now central hubs for their work.

The Mark

With a clear mission and strong name, we dialed in on core character traits of the brand: sincere, direct, vibrant and grassroots. To carry these traits into the mark, we simply shifted down the baseline of the “o” making it possible to read Tuyo as one word, while also showing that it’s composed of two smaller words - tu and yo. The dropped “o”became the wordmark’s special weirdness.

Tuyo relies heavily on storytelling through powerful photographs. To incorporate this functional perspective, the mark has to harmoniously coexist with a wide spectrum of imagery. The mark has to be adaptable to overlay on an image, while not overpowering an individual photographs moment of hope, danger, joy or reflection.

The Palette

The brand’s color palette pays homage to the earth’s natural and cultural diversity. This softer tonality allows for the natural bright moments in the imagery be the focal points.

The Collateral

The word mark and palette together afford huge variety on collateral. The mark is legible in multiple formats, from small screens to large posters, even juxtaposed as a magazine masthead. The website combines these compositional assets - mark & color - while showcasing the breathtaking imagery and vibrant diversity of it’s participants.