Salford Lads & Girls Club is a Grade II* listed building holding more than 120 years of social, community, sporting and cultural history. Known around the world through its connection to The Smiths, the Club is first and foremost a living, working place where young people and the community continue to create new stories every week.
We created a refreshed brand identity and digital presence to keep Salford Lads & Girls Club doing what they do best – bringing communities together, supporting youth programmes, and looking after its remarkable history. It’s been a special project for us with aligned values, close collaboration between our digital and creative teams, and of course – we always love a chance to celebrate the city we call home.
123 years of history is a lot to bring together and the Club needed its story told in a way that felt accessible and not overwhelming. Heritage, youth work, community impact, music and culture, events, weddings, and commercial hire all had to sit under one roof, each with its own clear path through the site. A parent looking for youth activities, a Smiths fan booking a tour, and a couple scouting a wedding venue all needed to find what they came for – quickly and easily.
As a brand with such a varied and rich history, the time had come to consolidate and streamline. Our job was to give this much-loved organisation an identity as cohesive as its reputation, without losing any of its legacy. Our aim was to revisalise the brand for a new era and make sure the club stays relevant and useful for future generations. As the rose and the arch are instantly recognisable, they had to stay front and centre. The brief wasn’t reinvention, it was refinement: based around building on what people already know and love. We kept the heritage at the heart of the brand, but made it work harder for every audience it serves today.
Phase 1’s key objectives were to:
It also had to be scalable and establish a foundation for future development. Phase 2 will build upon Phase 1 by introducing a more comprehensive brand system, enhanced content modules, richer storytelling, improved visual components and additional functionality.
The new website launched during a particularly exciting period for the Club, coinciding with increased national and international attention on the Club following its appearance in the launch campaign for Manchester United’s third kit. This created an opportunity to introduce the Club to new audiences; using that interest to encourage people to discover the wider story behind the building, from its heritage and cultural significance to the work it continues to do with young people today.
With a fixed launch date ahead of us, close collaboration between the Club and Carbon’s project management, design and development teams was key. Decisions, content and feedback were worked through quickly, allowing us to maintain momentum without compromising the quality or accessibility of the final site.
The arch is a recognisable part of the brand, so we wanted to make more use of it. We created an additional arch logo to sit alongside the core rose logo. The arch was also used as a framing device throughout the site.
We separated the rose from the logo, allowing it to become a signature graphic that can be used across the wider brand. We evolved the existing logo by improving its balance, clarity and legibility, while modernising the typography. This subtle refinement respected the original identity, whilst making it cohesive and improving readability. By also creating one-colour versions, the logo has more flexibility across different applications while celebrating the club’s culture, heritage and youth focus.
The typography combines heritage with a modern feel. The headline font is inspired by the period when Salford Lads & Girls Club was founded, while the body font is clean and contemporary. We’ve also introduced a handwritten font to add warmth and personality. The existing colour palette stays largely untouched – we made one small tweak to the brick red, purely to improve accessibility.
The goal of the website was to celebrate the club’s rich heritage and cultural significance whilst reinforcing that Salford Lads & Girls Club remains, first and foremost, a youth organisation dedicated to supporting young people and strengthening communities. With such varied audiences, the structure of the site was just as important as its visual identity. We reorganised the Club’s content around clear audience needs, creating distinct routes into youth and community activity, heritage and culture, business and partnerships, support, venue hire and news, allowing visitors to quickly find what matters to them.
The website was built using Carbon Creative’s standard content modules, Carbonberg, to ensure an efficient delivery, with the addition of a bespoke module, and a light-touch visual implementation. That modular approach is what let our team design and build the whole thing in an impressive six weeks.The site was built to WCAG 2.2 standards, mobile-first, with accessible colour contrast throughout – improved typography and page hierarchy, consistent spacing, and clear journeys for every audience, whichever device they’re on.
We care about projects with purpose, so we donated some of our time to this one. So far, we have donated £4,818. of hours to Phase 1 of this project, with additional time being scoped for Phase 2.
This project achieved the Club’s objectives – a digital presence that represented the important work they do, and a brand identity that nods to their history, celebrates their present, and looks forward to their future.
Bring on Phase 2!
“Working with Carbon Creative has been such a positive experience for Salford Lads & Girls Club.
From the very beginning, they took the time to really understand who we are, what we stand for and what makes the Club so special. They didn’t just come in and create a website for us — they listened to our story, understood our different audiences and helped us think about how we present ourselves in the digital world.
They’ve helped us bring together our heritage, our work with young people and the community, our culture and music, our events and our commercial opportunities in a way that feels much more like us.
What we’ve really appreciated is how collaborative the whole process has been. The team have been incredibly patient, creative and supportive throughout, taking on our ideas and helping shape them into something that works.
The new website has given us a much stronger digital presence and more importantly, a platform that properly reflects where Salford Lads & Girls Club is today while still celebrating everything that has made the Club what it is for 123 years.
We genuinely couldn’t be happier with the work Carbon Creative have done for us and would absolutely recommend them.”
Deena Mahmoud – Commercial Operations Manager at Salford Lads & Girls Club
View the site here: https://salfordladsclub.co.uk/