Violet Studios
2024 Year in Review

Our First Year as Violet

While the folks on our team have been working in the movement for years and providing design services for a while through our sister org, Vegan Hacktivists, this year marked an important milestone—2024 was our first official year as Violet Studios!

The explosion of work reaffirmed us the importance of what we do and the trust you’ve placed in us

We were blown away by the response when we began promoting our pro-bono design services. So many of you reached out and decided to trust us with the careful crafting of your brands, websites, and more. We’re grateful for this response and your confidence in us. 

The large volume of requests was staggering, highlighting how much design and communications services are needed in our movement for animals. In fact, a survey by AfA among its network of Asian NGOs revealed that communications was the second-highest capacity need, right after funding.

Kate Rodman, Violet Studios Co-Founder & Creative Director, reflects on the highlights and milestones of 2024

This confirmed what we already knew: 
There is a gap to fill, a deep need for high-quality visual communication to support our shared mission for animals.

As a small team made up of volunteers and a handful of staff, handling the large volume of requests has been a learning experience for us.
But even within those growing pains, I’m so proud to say that we’ve completed hundreds of requests—large and small—in just one year.

The stats you’ll find below are just numbers–what’s harder to quantify is our true qualitative impact:

  • With our small but dedicated team, we’ve spent countless hours consulting dozens of organizations like yours, helping steer them in the right direction to avoid costly mistakes. 

  • We’ve created brands that speak volumes, equipping groups with the tools they need to fully and authentically represent themselves to their target audiences. 

  • We have no doubt that our website design and support services have saved organizations from hours of stress—not to mention cost—and now those sites are helping them communicate their missions to the world. 

For a small team like ours, achieving what we did in 2024 wasn’t
easy, but our designers stepped up to the challenge. 

We’re a team founded on a shared commitment to animal protection and advocacy, finding ways to use our skills to make a difference. The impact you're about to see was achieved by a team made of mostly volunteers, offering their expertise to further the movement.

Stats – 2024

Orgs Served:

79

(All-time: 151)

29% BIPGM
10% EA-aligned

Services provided: 145 

As you’ll see in the numbers below, most organizations we worked with got at least two services in 2024. Not only that, but over ⅓ of our services went to BIPGM-led groups—and we typically provided more services to them, too.

Avg. number of services per org: 2.2

34% BIPGM
10% EA-aligned

Estimated amount saved: $579k *

  • We’ve estimated the cost we’re saving to organizations (and the movement) with our completely free services by calculating what the industry cost would’ve been if these organizations had gone to the market to receive the same support. For the pricing, we are referencing the design industry standard: The Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines. The Graphic Artists Guild (GAG) has been the most reputable reference for professional design pricing in the world for decades; In fact, we think our estimate may be even undervalued, as the GAG updates their pricing guidelines every few years, and the last release was in 2021 — of course, market prices have only increased since then.

Served orgs on
6 continents

In 2024, our support spanned nearly every corner of the globe, reaching organizations across six continents. Nearly half of our services (43%) went towards groups working worldwide, whose work impacts animals all over the globe. Here's a breakdown of the regions we supported:

Worldwide: 43.46%

North America: 24.61%

Asia: 16.23%

Europe: 4.71%

Latin America: 4.71%

Oceania: 2.62%

Africa: 2.09%

Middle East: 1.57%

Logo Line-Up

Project Highlights

  • Basic

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  • Advanced

    What should we know about the services you provide? Better descriptions result in more sales.

    Make It

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Testimonials

  • “Working alongside Vegan Hactivists and Violet Studios has been an incredible journey for Animal Alliance Asia. From the inception of AAA, they've been a great support, laying the groundwork for our website. During our rebranding phase, they guided us seamlessly through the process. What truly sets them apart is their genuine effort to understand our values and ethos, reflected beautifully in their designs. We're immensely grateful for their partnership and look forward to continuing to make a positive impact together!"

    – Elly Nakajima, Co-Founder & Director, Animal Alliance Asia

  • “Working with Violet Studios was a fantastic experience. Their team took the time to understand our mission and goals, ensuring the design captured the essence of our advocacy for animals and the planet. They truly understood our vision and brought it to life with creativity and professionalism. From start to finish, they were collaborative, attentive to feedback, and incredibly skilled at balancing our need for a minimalist, yet impactful design. Violet Studios truly exceeded our expectations. We are incredibly grateful for their work and the essential role they play in elevating organizations like ours, helping us communicate our mission with clarity and impact.”

    – Laura Fox, President, Animal Kind Alliance 

  • “I cannot imagine where we would be without Violet Studios' support in designing our donation platform. The fact that they genuinely understand and are committed to our mission ensured the final product truly reflected the spirit of our brief. Kate and her team were very responsive, had a 'can-do' attitude to challenges and showed incredible dedication to getting the design just right. They even provided proactive feedback and suggestions on platform content, subtly but significantly enhancing it. No other team could have met our needs better, even if we'd had an unlimited budget. This is an unbelievable service that more people should know about!”

    – Aidan Alexander, Co-founder & Director of Partnerships & Charity Recommendations, FarmKind

  • “Violet Studios did an incredible job with the design of our report. We were launching it at an event at New Zealand Parliament so it had to look great. After receiving the draft we immediately knew that it was the best decision to trust the design in the hands of Violet Studios. It was super professional, detailed, and very high quality which is exactly what we needed when presenting our ask to policymakers. It could not have been better. Thank you very much for elevating the report to such a high level.”

    – Rainer Kravets, Co-Executive Director, Animal Policy International

  • “Working with Violet Studios has been an immensely enriching experience! They consistently demonstrate excellence across all aspects: from understanding and anticipating our needs and limitations, to facilitating seamless communication, and, of course, delivering top-tier designs. Thanks to their expertise, we successfully launched a captivating campaign page to engage voters and politicians in Germany, right on schedule before the elections. Violet Studios proves to be an invaluable asset to the animal and vegan movement. Supporting them through donations ensures that multiple organizations will benefit from their exceptional work.”

    – Thomas Hecquet, Vorstandsvorsitzender/Director, Animal Society

  • Working with Kate and the team at Violet Studios has been an absolute pleasure. She is incredibly talented and truly nailed the brief, delivering work that far exceeded our expectations. The designs, branding, and animations were not only visually stunning but also perfectly aligned with our vision and goals. Her creativity and attention to detail resulted in fantastic work that we are proud to showcase. I would definitely recommend her to anyone looking for a professional, creative, and highly skilled designer. Thank you again for making the process so seamless and for producing such exceptional results!

    – Robbie Locke, CEO & Founder, The Freedom Food Alliance & foodfacts.org

  • The team at Violet Studios was a dream come true for now several of our projects. They knew how to ask all the right questions, create a design that reflected our goals, and implement it on an easy to use and maintain website. Thank you friends at Violet Studios!

    – David Meyer, CEO, Humane America Animal Foundation

  • It has been such an incredible experience for us as a new nonprofit to work with Violet Studios on the development of our website and brand kit. From the very beginning, their team has been exceptionally generous with their time, insights, and skills. We came to them with a rough mockup of our website on a basic platform, and they helped us transform it into a stunning, professional website on a platform with better features and capabilities—one that truly represents who we are as an organization. Their thoughtful feedback and collaborative approach helped us clarify our brand colors, logo, and overall theme, enabling us to present our best selves to the world at a critical time during our public launch. They were incredibly responsive, always making themselves available to guide us through edits, answer questions, and troubleshoot any issues that arose. Their support has been a true game-changer for us. We were blown away and deeply touched by their amazing work and unwavering dedication to supporting other organizations. Working with Violet Studios far exceeded our expectations. Thanks to their vision, expertise, and generosity, we now have a website and organizational brand that we are proud to share with the world. We highly recommend them and are deeply grateful for their partnership and support!

    – Dana, Jessica, Miko & Nam, Co-Founders, Flourish Coalition

  • We worked with Violet as representatives of the Food and Climate Action Group, a coalition of 20+ NGOs advocating for sustainable, just, and equitable food systems that consider human, planetary, and animal needs alike. Founded in 2022, the coalition had been working "behind the curtains" until 2024, when we decided to give the Action Group a public image by starting a branding process. To achieve this, we reached out to Violet Studios, who generously supported us in developing a logo, brand, and website. The process was very clear from the beginning. Kate's help was fundamental, thanks to her ability to understand the core characteristics of the coalition and represent them visually in a creative and beautiful design. Once the branding was finalized, Violet began developing the website, which turned out to be very intuitive, clear, and well-structured. In the making of the website, we really appreciated the fact that our opinions were taken into consideration and the team was always available and ready to make edits on the things we didn't feel like a match for our coalition (for example, in the choice of the pictures). After the website launch, Kate and her team provided us with the necessary access and support to manage the site independently, answering any of our doubts along the way. We’re certain that we can count on Violet for future support and couldn’t recommend them highly enough. Their work enabled us to have a clear public image and a platform through which we can share our work, and to ultimately amplify the strength of our message. Thank you so much!

    – Food & Climate Action Group

  • Our organization Dharma Voices for Animals has been contemplating a logo and website revival for over two years now. Our fears of lack of brand recognition and hesitancy to change were all made easy by Kate Rodman and the team at Violet Studios. They handled all of our concerns with such care and genuine concern. The entire process was so incredible from start to finish. The team were very communicative and made what could have been a long and stressful process very exciting and enjoyable. From the new logo to our new website, our network is thoroughly impressed as are we. They went above and beyond our expectations, even creating special illustrations that we can use! There is no way we could have done all this without Violet Studios and we are eternally grateful for their hard work in making our brand revamp not only possible, but joyful!

    – Andrea Diaz, Operations Director, Dharma Voices for Animals

  • Collaborating with Violet Studios has been an exceptional experience for our team. The social media report they provided us with was incredibly thorough and insightful, offering us valuable data that has helped us refine and improve our communication strategy. We are especially grateful to Gabriele, who demonstrated exceptional professionalism and expertise throughout the process. Her insights and recommendations were instrumental in our strategy. We are really pleased with the results and look forward to seeing her in the near future.

    - Jesica Bon Denis, Communication Director, Fundación Veg

  • Violet Studios’ social media consultancy was a great learning opportunity for our team. We were impressed by the insights and advice that were incredibly helpful and relevant to the needs of our culturally diverse team who engage with different online communities across Asia. Gabriele was very open to answer every question we had ranging from the most basic to more specific, as well as providing customized tips and tricks to help us communicate with the online audiences in the most effective way. Without a doubt, this support has given us a right push towards the exact direction we were looking for!

    - Communications Team, Animal Alliance Asia

  • I recently had the pleasure of being coached by Violet Studios on our social media strategy and tactics, and the experience has been nothing short of outstanding. Their tailored feedback, based on thorough channel analysis, provided us with invaluable insights specific to our platforms. Beyond just general information and tips, they equipped us with the latest trends and studies to keep our content relevant and impactful. The team went above and beyond the booked time to ensure all my questions and concerns were thoroughly addressed. Their dedication didn't stop at the session's end; they made sure I walked away with a clear, actionable plan. This personalized approach has already yielded immediate results in our engagement and outreach. I highly recommend Violet Studios to any organization in the vegan and animal advocacy space. Their guidance has been instrumental in enhancing our social media presence, and I couldn't be more grateful for their support.

    - Juliane Priesemeister, Executive Director, The Truth Organization

  • We sought guidance in the field of communication, and our meeting with Gabriele far exceeded our expectations. She provided a comprehensive analysis of our social media work, offering valuable insights that revealed improvement possibilities. Since implementing some of the advice, we've experienced over a 600% increase in audience engagement with our stories and a staggering 1000% rise in post reach. The new format has also led to increased sharing and visibility in the feed. Without Gabriele's generous and professional assistance, this wouldn't have been possible. Thank you for helping us make a difference for animals!

    - Alexia Dean, Fundraising Director, Animal Libre

  • On behalf of the organizing team and all the participants of the Social Media Training Workshop, I would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude for your invaluable contribution as a speaker. Your expertise and insights on social media and digital communication have significantly enriched our workshop and provided our attendees with practical and actionable knowledge. Your session was not only informative but also inspiring, offering fresh perspectives and innovative ideas that will undoubtedly enhance the effectiveness of our social media campaigns for animal welfare. The participants have expressed their appreciation for your engaging presentation and the depth of your knowledge. We are deeply grateful for the time and effort you dedicated to preparing and delivering such a compelling presentation. Your willingness to share your experiences and expertise has made a lasting impact on our community and has contributed immensely to the success of this event. Thank you once again for your outstanding contribution. We look forward to the possibility of working with you again in the future and continuing our shared mission to improve animal welfare.

    - Kholisani Ndlovu, Communications Director, Nurture Imvelo Trust

Collabs

We’re thrilled to have built ongoing relationships with these programs, which continue to reach out to us for design support. It’s been a pleasure to stay connected, and support the inspiring participants of these programs!

ProVeg’s Kickstarting for Good

Krista Hiddema’s Strategic Planning for Animal Activism (SPAA)

AIM’s Charity Entrepreneurship program

Conferences

AVA Summit in Washington, DC

While we were providing design services through Vegan Hacktivists, our tech-focused sister organization, we realized that not everyone knew about our design offering—this was the main push that led to the formation of Violet. Attending the AVA Summit for the first time as Violet confirmed to us that this was the right move—we were moved by how warmly it was received! 

It meant so much to us to see people’s faces light up when they discovered our free services, or that we had worked on many brands that they already knew. We loved connecting with past clients in person—whether at our booth or a capacity-building meetup we co-hosted with VH—learning from other advocates, and building new connections along the way.

Find out why we’re already looking forward to AVA 2025 in our sister org’s blog!

AFAD in Hanoi, Viet Nam

Attending Asia Farm Animal Day (AFAD), organized by The Asia for Animals Coalition (AfA) and AVA International, was important to us for many reasons. Events like these deepen our understanding of the regions we work with, help us provide better support, and offer the opportunity to learn from fellow advocates. AFAD 2024 allowed us to connect and unite with those fighting for a better future for animals in Asia, and show them support. 

We can confidently say that we left AFAD with a deeper understanding of the needs of advocates in Asia and a greater awareness of the challenges they face. We also gained valuable insights into leadership, communications, and how to acknowledge and work with contexts that often go unnoticed.

Check out the top lessons Violet and VH brought home to learn more!

Additional Resources

With the launch of Violet’s website, we also introduced new resources to help you elevate your design skills and see what our services can look like.

A Place to Find Design Tips & Tricks

With the launch of Violet, we introduced our Knowledge Hub—a space dedicated to helping you build the design skills you need to confidently maintain and grow your brand.

Almost all the organizations we work with are too small to have in-house designers for day-to-day support, which is why we believe it’s so important for you to hone your own skills. At the end of the day, you’re the one responsible for keeping your brand consistent and impactful.

Design might seem intimidating at first, but it’s a skill like any other—it can be learned. Even knowing a little can make a big difference. While we’ll always be here for advice, and there’s no substitute for a professional brand foundation, the Knowledge Hub is here to ensure you have the resources to thrive on your own. Our Knowledge Hub includes not only tips for common questions but also a curated list of resources for advocates to explore!

Sharing Design Insights and Behind-the-Scenes of Our Work

With our new identity comes new social media profiles! Be sure to follow us for:

  • Helpful design tips and advice

  • Behind-the-scenes looks at our work, showcasing the thought and design processes behind our free support for other advocates

  • Updates on the conferences we’re attending

Thanks to everyone who shaped Violet into what it is now! 

In 2024, we were able to increase the quality and quantity of design being produced for the animal advocacy movement and on behalf of Violet, I’d like to thank everyone who has supported or worked with us along the way.

Whether you’ve used our services and helped us learn about your invaluable missions, helped us evolve with each challenge you needed support with, or you’ve been following and supporting our work—we’re incredibly grateful to all of you.

I’m also immensely grateful for our design extraordinaries on our team, the talented volunteers who contributed to our mission, as well as those on our referral list who have stepped in to handle projects we couldn’t support due to bandwidth limitations or requests outside our scope. Without them, Violet wouldn’t be where it is today.

As we head into 2025, we’re carrying forward the valuable lessons we learned in 2024: Effectively managing a high volume of requests and prioritizing rest to ensure we can continue offering this service sustainably for the long term.

We’re planning to introduce an updated intake process for new requests to streamline our workflow and allow for more design time! At the same time, we’ll continue focusing on what we do best—and what was successful this year—delivering high-quality visual design services at no cost to organizations like yours, making a difference for animals.

None of this would be possible without incredible people like you.

It is people like you, who believe that high-quality design services should be accessible to everyone advocating for a better future for animals, who make this a reality. Help shine a light on the work of advocates, limited by small budgets or short-staffed teams, and ensure that their designs reflect their missions in 2025.

Your donation will allow other impactful organizations to focus on what they do best as we support them with our services at no cost.