UrbanBetter
Client: Prof Tolullah Oni, Cambridge University and University of Cape Town
Period: 2020-2025
Sustainable development
Healthcare
Development & multilateral
Education & knowledge
01 — The sneak-peek
Four identities for one powerful science mind
UrbanBetter is the Africa-led movement Professor Tolullah Oni founded to build healthier, more equitable cities. BBA Liminal gave it a public face: a name system, a positioning, a logo rooted in West African symbols, and a four-pillar digital architecture that turns rigorous urban science into a movement people can join.
02 — The liminal moment
Professor Tolullah Oni — a public health physician and urban epidemiologist, born in Lagos — had spent years shaping urban epidemiology on a global scale through Cambridge and the University of Cape Town. The ideas carried weight, but they lived in journals and lecture halls, without a distinct public presence. In 2020 she founded UrbanBetter, a movement to build healthy African cities through transdisciplinary partnerships.
That was the threshold: an established body of science, and the reputation behind it, needing to become something the public could see, trust and take part in. The brief was a standout identity for the movement, carrying Oni's academic legacy across dual naming, positioning, logo, website and social. The deeper problem was form — giving serious science a face open enough for ordinary people to join, and an Africa-led movement a presence equal to its global ambition.
03 — The transformation
Four pillars, one movement. We crafted a cohesive identity uniting UrbanBetter's four interconnected pillars — UrbanBetter, Cityzens, Academy and Oni et al. Each holds its own look and custom functionality, built as subdomains on urbanbetter.science so each stands clearly as a pillar of the whole.
Rooted in Africa, relevant worldwide. Drawing on Adinkra — pre-colonial West African symbols carrying universal aphorisms — we built a logo mark that speaks at once to health (a cross) and to urban space (a dot held within a circle): an African-born idea with a worldwide reach.
Serious science, made joinable. Cityzens, the most complex pillar, is citizen science you can take part in — joining and managing campaigns, training to collect air-quality data or to lead runs, a full toolbox for packaging data for officials and researchers, and a global tool that visualises what Cityzens gather worldwide.
04 — The craft
A seriously playful movement for healthier cities
A four-identity system held together by one idea; a logo mark drawn from Adinkra symbolism; and a digital platform that carries both the seriousness and the play of the brands — illustration and animation alongside photography, simplifying complex urban-health topics into something a citizen can pick up and use.
Cityzens
Cityzens Training
Academy
Oni et al.
05 — The validation of purpose
The work gave an Africa-led science movement a public face and, in Cityzens, a way for people to do the science themselves — loading campaigns, collecting air-quality data, putting evidence into the hands of officials and researchers. The movement now counts some 10,000 Cityzens working for healthier cities, and is scaling its Hubs toward a goal of 100,000 Cityzens and 100 Hubs over the next decade. A body of urban-health research became a movement people can belong to.
Naming
Brand & communications strategy
Audiovisual & motion
Brand identity design
Stakeholder strategy
Brand platform development
Positioning & narrative
Purpose architecture
