Take Back Big Tech: visual identity and website
A visual identity and campaign website for a UK pressure group and think tank holding Big Tech accountable, designed to feel like a movement, not a brand.
There's no shortage of organisations criticising Big Tech. The problem is that most of them look and sound like the institutions they're trying to challenge: clean, restrained, legible only to people already inside the policy conversation.
Take Back Big Tech needed to operate in a different register entirely. The campaign's audience is the general public, people who feel the effects of platform power in their daily lives but have no obvious route to doing anything about it. The brief was to make the problem feel urgent, winnable, and worth showing up for.
The analysis
The visual identity is rooted in protest graphics and zine culture.
Yellow carries the background and gives the identity its energy. Black handles structure. Cyan is used for calls to action, highlighted text, and moments when the site asks you to do something.
Barlow in heavy uppercase is used for headlines, compressed and direct. Space Grotesk is used for body copy, keeping things legible without feeling institutional. The collage imagery layers raised fists over tech company logos (Meta, Google, X, TikTok, Microsoft), reinforcing the campaign's core position that these are political actors, not neutral services.
The website structure follows the campaign's logic. It opens with the problem (Big Tech is ruining our world), then moves through the detail: social media isn't social, AI is a war machine, the internet is no longer ours. From there, it sets out the structural opportunity (existing legislation that needs public backing) and ends with clear actions: subscribe, volunteer, donate. Every section of the site leads to something you can do.
The design
The identity and website have given Take Back Big Tech a foundation to build from: a visual system and web presence that can grow with the campaign across digital, print, and physical contexts. The work covered:
- a visual identity rooted in protest and zine culture that functions across social media, web, and print
- a campaign website where every section leads to a clear action: subscribe, volunteer, donate
- editorial content that gives people practical frameworks for engaging, including pieces on collective action, attention strikes, and the disappearing news landscape
- donation (via Stripe), volunteer sign-up, and newsletter subscription built into the core structure of the site
- a design system flexible enough to carry across future campaigns, direct actions, and attention strikes as the organisation scales
What's next
Take Back Big Tech is moving into its next phase: attention strikes, collective platform action, and direct regulatory pressure campaigns. The identity and design system are built to carry across those contexts, and the ongoing work is about making sure that holds as the campaign grows and the political landscape shifts.
If you're building something in this space, a campaign, a movement or an organisation that needs design to support real mobilisation, get in touch.