our current logo was created pre-pandemic 7 years ago when TikTok wasn’t famous and no one had seen Avengers End Game yet

The first logo for Spark was designed by my dear friend Jeremie 7 years ago, the logo was designed based off a very simple brief that i gave him; I wanted to start a magazine which was going to capture the really cool and memorable content young people love to read about. After a few days, Jeremie sent me this beautiful logo which has inspired our creative direction as a startup with little to no resources over the years. Sadly, Jeremie passed away a few months after sharing this design with me.

I still find it surprising how Jeremie worked hard to produce this logo then because i wasn’t fully sure at the time what i was doing myself; how he just passionately moved to work on the most important thing i needed to start this company. Over the years, we have collaborated with many other people who have dedicated their time, resources and expertise to Spark, I am forever grateful to community and people who just believe in the dreams of other people. But passionate support for other people’s dreams has always been the binding principle at Spark; Representing the passion and interest of our community and telling the story of young dreamers no matter who they are. This mission is so huge and important to us that we have taken the decision to change our logo and look to increase our scale of reach and impact on our community and in the world.

Our new logo also ushers in our new brand positioning simply couched as “People and Art” This was necessary because over the past 7 years we have been operating as a magazine and content company and by doing so, we have gathered enough expertise to understand the gaps in our space and how we can be more impactful. Our work over the years has largely depended on our community of students who come out with the content ideas and execute every magazine edition, our goal has always been to give these young people the much needed experience they need from working on something challenging but fun. However, operating as a magazine company has it’s limitations and that’s why we are changing our positioning.

More than a Magazine, we are a community platform

We want to take our work a step further and enable these young people through our own platform which will highlight the work and stories of young creatives, entrepreneurs and our community. As a company, we will build the necessary tools and identify partnerships which can help us reach young creatives and entrepreneurs and support them with resources and expertise so they can keep doing what they love in the best way they can.

Platform Support: From talking to creatives over the years, we have identified that there is a barrier in platforms focused on optimizing their voice and helping them reach their audience. Over the years, we have told the stories of many creative young people before they became famous. Notable examples include Iphone DJ before he became on to become one of Ghana’s most popular Djs and Vanessa Donkor before she went on to become one of Ghana’s most famous TV hosts. we know that telling their stories is necessary but just not enough, with a platform we can keep doing that and provide more resources to our community of Creatives and Entrepreneurs.

We are starting this with our new platform here which will host the work and stories of young people. Our goal is to improve this with more functions and tools that our community of creatives and entrepreneurs can take advantage of to show their work and reach an audience.

Identifying what matters most to our community

Over the years, we have gathered enough data to understand the key creative areas young people need amplification on. We have identified Creative interests like fashion, performance and fine Art as the necessary areas most of our community have interest in. Also, these areas lack home grown platforms which tell the stories of young creatives in these fields. Our goal is to build expertise in understanding the exact needs of young people in these areas and how we can support through educative content, informative posts, mentorships and feedback to help them focus on improving their craft

Creating Content People Love

We have been doing this over the years mostly in magazine format but we want to scale it up by creating truly unique content that out audience love. This also includes by taking advantage of other platforms like podcasting which we have recently launched and driving our reach on new age platforms like Tiktok. Producing content has always been our expertise but we hope to become a market leader at it by producing content which inspires and informs our community to keep doing what they love.

Advertising and brand Partnerships

We want to become better at this as a way of sustaining the business. From our research, there are two difficulties brand face with digital marketing; a unique local company with many platforms that they can reach their audience and also clear data to help inform campaign strategy and results. We believe we are better placed to solve this with brands as long as a community to tell your brand story to and grow brand affinity. We will be looking forward to reach more brands and advertise their products and services on their platforms. Kindly reach out via email sparkmagazinegh@gmail.com if you want to talk more about this.

Now, here’s our new logo