When it comes to clearly conveying important information at a critical time, the way words are chosen and presented can easily decide the way a message lands with its recipient, and how it is received.
So it was last Friday, when Services Australia sent out an all-staff email from chief executive Rebecca Skinner charting the course ahead for the agency in the wake of the blistering Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme report, delivered that same day, that recommended referrals to criminal prosecution.
The big-reset email from Skinner came in the stock-standard Services Australia format and style now in use for some time.
But it used a typeface that even a twist in an episode of Utopia or The Thick of It couldn’t make up: the mandated corporate font for the very agency that created robodebt is ‘Roboto’.
There is no suggestion that Skinner had any knowledge that the email she was about to send to circa 35,000 staff contained the font with the most incendiary name possible given the circumstances.
But someone did know, and they signed off on it too.
(And yes, we know it’s a font created by Google and open-sourced.)
… but you can add glitter
Rebrands don’t occur by accident, they involve a serious amount of design work and the careful selection of any number of elements including how written and text communications will appear.
The Mandarin can reveal that at least some of Services Australia’s branding and communications work was let to design and the creative agency Icon Agency, which assembled the new agency’s look-and-feel as part of an image overhaul that followed the dumping of the Department of Human Services and the standing-up of Services Australia in 2020.
The administrative orders for the new executive agency Services Australia were issued in May 2019 when the Morrison government was re-elected.
Given robodebt — a colloquialism Human Services and various ministers fought hell-for-leather to stop media and welfare advocates using — first became a media flashpoint around 2019, it seems untenable that either the government or the design agency would have been oblivious to illegal debt racket’s negative connotations and brand damage, not to mention the class action.
But as the royal commission found, so many things around robodebt pushed plausible deniability to its very furthest logical boundaries and far beyond reasonable belief.
Makeovers-R-Us
Icon Agency lists itself as a “Creative, PR and digital innovation agency” that offers capabilities including “Creative & Brand, Behaviour Change, PR & Communications, Reputation & Issues”. It gets plenty of work around town, too.
The big Services Australia makeover, led by a new Instagram account used as the platform for all the other brand and house style changes, went live in August 2022, according to Icon Agency’s online client portfolio, just weeks after the Albanese government was sworn in late May 2022.
It’s not clear when the work was started.
“The addition of Instagram is part of a broader change to Services Australia’s communications approach to educate the public about the modernisation of government services to make them more simple, helpful, respectful and transparent (their four principles),” the Icon Agency project description says.
“Stories about their services are often shared on Instagram, and Services Australia wants to be part of the conversation and meet their audience where they’re most active.”
Under its description of the “solution” provided to Services Australia, Icon details how it created “pre-built groups of all creative options”.
“Working closely with Services Australia, Icon Agency first developed four detailed creative concepts for the new Instagram account before proceeding with a preferred creative route, all of which aligned with their key principles, purpose, vision and wider brand guidelines,” Icon said.
“Icon developed the approved concept into a detailed style guide and usage document that explained how to use all of the creative tools and devices in the day-to-day management of the account. A detailed channel strategy was created which outlined key channel best practices, formats, rules, guidelines and more to aid in the launch of the account.”
Brave faces
The accompanying visuals for that execution make it pretty plain that Roboto is the font of choice for the agency and client alike.
In a slide marked “Typography” for Services Australia, Roboto is listed as the “primary typeface”.
“Roboto is the Service Australia Primary brand typeface and will be used for all social media communications,” the style guide slide says.
“Services Australia uses Roboto in Regular 400, Medium 500, Bold 700 and Black 900 weights in both regular and italic formats.”
The Mandarin put a number of questions about the selection of the Roboto font for services, including whether the new branding required or received ministerial sign-off and who approved the use of the Roboto font.
“Services Australia is grateful for the Royal Commission’s valuable examination and we are treating the findings with the seriousness they deserve. We are determined to apply the learnings and keep our focus on providing the best possible service to the Australian community,” Services Australia said.
“The choice of typefaces in staff emails is totally unrelated. This glib questioning only serves to trivialise and diminish the work of the Royal Commission and the important recommendations that have our agency’s full attention.”
The agency that created robodebt chose the font as its corporate typeface by sheer coincidence. You really couldn’t make that up.
:
Purging robodebt infection from APS will take time, Skinner tells staff
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