TWC2: Transient Workers Matter 2
2024
Team
Mirza Mas’od
Gu Yuyang
Jade Ng
Ho Rui An, Joel
Brand Identity, Campaign Design, Human-Centered Design, Social Impact
A comprehensive rebrand of TWC2 (Transient Workers Count Too), a Singapore-based organisation defending the legal and welfare rights of migrant workers. The redesign rebuilds the organisation's visual identity, messaging architecture, and touchpoint system from the ground up — crucially, from the perspective of its primary users: South Asian and Southeast Asian construction workers navigating Singapore's legal framework with limited English proficiency, constrained digital access, and a well-founded wariness of institutional authority.
The new identity centres on three interconnected pillars: a typographic mark that encodes dialogue into its very form, a public campaign rooted in specific, actionable legal rights, and a Buddy peer support network that pairs workers with trained community ambassadors. Deliverables span the full identity system — logo, campaign collateral, mobile web application, and comprehensive touchpoint guidelines.
Field Research
The project opened with background research on migrant worker conditions in Singapore. To ground the data in lived experience, the team built a persona — Raj Baral: a construction worker from India, 22 years in Singapore, English-speaking, and well aware that TWC2 exists. His barrier is not information. It is the fear of being labelled a troublemaker — of retaliation, deportation threats, and the stigma of being seen to cause problems for an employer who controls his livelihood and his legal status. The journey map traced his experience from job site injury through seeking treatment, navigating employer response, confronting a lack of legal knowledge, and eventually reaching help — charting the emotional arc from guilt and regret through fear and intimidation to, finally, relief.
On-site interviews with workers in Little India ran alongside this desk research — sitting with men on their day off, on grass and kerbs, not in a studio. A TWC2 caseworker's observation shaped the direction: workers visibly relax when someone is willing to listen. The design problem clarified: TWC2 was predominantly reactive, reaching people after crises had already developed, reliant on workers coming forward at the moment of greatest vulnerability.
Problem Definition
Three structural issues emerged: lack of rights awareness, fear silencing voices, and isolation intensifying vulnerability. Employers routinely threaten workers with deportation to prevent them from seeking help. Language barriers and cultural disconnection leave workers without access to support systems that exist in principle but not in practice. The redesign needed to address all three — not sequentially, but simultaneously, at the first point of contact.
Identity
The previous TWC2 logo — an abstract figure mark in navy blue, accompanied by Chinese characters — communicated institutional legitimacy but was calibrated to the wrong audience. Its palette was cold, its mark generic, and its bilingual framing addressed a broader civic demographic rather than the South Asian and Southeast Asian construction workers who constitute the majority of TWC2's users.
The new identity is built around a single typographic insight: the "2" in TWC2 is redesigned as two interlocking quotation marks — one in Energising Orange, one in Inspiring Blue — forming the numeral while encoding dialogue. Two voices. Two parties in conversation. The mark makes legible, at the level of the logo itself, what the organisation exists to facilitate: the exchange between worker and advocate. The mixed-case wordmark — lowercase 't', uppercase 'WC', the new brandmark — is bold and modern, registering as contemporary and direct rather than bureaucratic.
The brandmark extends beyond the logo into the campaign system. The two rounded forms — orange and blue — become graphic frames in poster compositions, with worker and Buddy images placed within them. Energising Orange (#FF4D00) signals warmth and urgency; Inspiring Blue (#0066CC) holds institutional trust.
Voice
Guerrilla testing in Little India confirmed the core insight: most workers already knew TWC2. The barrier was not awareness but the psychological cost of acting on it. The messaging strategy shifted accordingly — away from explanation and toward empowerment. The campaign activates the "2" throughout: Your Voice Matters 2. Your Rights Matter 2. Let's Solve It 2gether.
Specific legal facts anchor the copy: injury compensation of up to $289,000; the right to receive wages on time; the right to retain your own passport; the right to understand your employment contract before signing it. AI-generated imagery (Midjourney) was used throughout — allowing dignified, controlled representation of migrant workers without the ethical risk of documentary photography. Workers are shown smiling, confident, and capable: one with a bandaged arm, arms crossed, meeting the camera directly. The injuries are present; the defeat is not.
Touchpoints
The touchpoint system was designed as a sequential journey: posters and booklets placed in workers' daily environments — construction site hoardings, dormitory common areas — as the first point of contact; a mobile web app providing rapid access to rights information across five categories (employment contracts, fair wages, safe working conditions, medical care, help desk); the Buddy and WhatsApp system for human connection and ongoing guidance; and TWC2 caseworkers for situations requiring in-depth intervention. Each layer hands off to the next. The designed materials open the door; the Buddies walk through it alongside you.
Future State
The team mapped a future-state support journey — tracing how the brand system, the Buddies network, and the digital touchpoints would need to evolve as the organisation grows. Every design element was tested against the same question the project opened with: would a migrant worker in crisis trust what they encounter? The Buddy network is where the answer depends least on design.
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