CLAPA retires its smiley face for a Thread for Life rebrand (interview with CLAPA)

At its 45th anniversary, CLAPA was rewriting its strategy from membership association to campaigning charity. Its beloved smiley identity resonated with parents but alienated the adults it served, and as an independent charity with no government or NHS funding it needed to look mature enough for major corporate donations.

Swap a babyish smiley logo for a surgical thread running through the letterforms — the thread that closes a cleft becomes the brand, for every age.

The Team, introduced by Megan, a cleft-affected designer at the agency, did the rebrand pro bono but with full contracts and phased co-collaboration. It changed 'Association' to 'Action' to keep the acronym, built the identity on Megan's lived experience — the thread that closed her cleft became a display typeface device weighted equally on the L and P — and drew the palette from her mood boards of hospitals, scrubs and uniforms. CLAPA also invested in its first professional photo shoots using people with lived experience, and launched a charitable-foundation-funded website to replace its ten-year-old one.

Since launch CLAPA received no single piece of negative feedback, even from supporters with the old logo tattooed on their bodies, and hired its first-ever corporate and major donor partnerships manager (all self-reported in the interview). Success will be judged on adult reach, corporate engagement and being taken seriously at government and senior NHS level.

In an interview with Design Week in March 2026, CLAPA chief executive Claire Cunniffe and The Team creative director David Recchia described the cleft charity's pro bono rebrand, which launched about a month earlier. CLAPA had used a smiley-face logo since 1979, but young people and adults with clefts repeatedly said they did not identify with it — it read as a children's charity brand, and cleft is a lifelong condition.

Recchia says the agency was introduced by Megan, a designer at The Team born with a cleft and supported by the charity all her life, and the project grew out of a fundraising day. The pair describe a 'done with, not done to' process: phased co-collaboration, a signed contract, and over six months of work despite the pro bono arrangement.

The identity is built on Megan's experience: the literal thread used to close her cleft gap became the 'Thread for Life' device, drawn through a bespoke display typeface with equal emphasis on the L and P so lip and palate are represented alike. Dropping the face also made room for hidden clefts — an isolated cleft palate has no visible difference but affects speech, hearing and dentistry. The colours come from the hospital environments and uniforms of her mood board.

Cunniffe recalls that changing the last word of the name from Association to Action let CLAPA keep its well-known acronym while signalling it is a campaigning voice, not a membership body — a shift aimed at landing bigger corporate donations, which the charity needs as it receives no government or NHS funding.

It shows a rebrand facing its hardest test case — supporters with the old logo tattooed on their bodies — and landing with zero negative feedback (self-reported).

The concept is drawn from a real surgical thread and a real community member's life, which is why it reads as 'right' rather than 'new'.

Renaming Association to Action kept 45 years of acronym equity while changing what the organisation says it is.

The charity tied the new identity directly to fundraising capability, hiring its first corporate partnerships manager as the brand launched.

A heritage logo can hold a charity hostage to one chapter of its story; changing one letter of the name and one symbol can reposition decades — if the replacement is rooted in lived experience.

A month after launch, Cunniffe said the old and new sites looked like two different organisations sharing a name, and CLAPA's stated KPIs for the brand were increased reach among hard-to-find adults, engagement with corporates and major donors, and a campaigning voice taken seriously at government and senior NHS level.