The difference we made to Humberside Fire and Rescue Service
Bringing the people, places and purpose of HFRS to life
- Campaign design
- Bespoke illustration
- Recruitment marketing assets
- Event/display mock-ups
- Brand storytelling
What They Wanted
What the client originally asked for (surface-level goals)
“We need recruitment materials that feel engaging, inclusive and true to who we are - not just another fire service campaign."
Humberside Fire and Rescue Service came to KW for support in delivering a wider recruitment campaign. They needed a creative approach that would help them speak to a broader, more diverse audience while showing that a career with HFRS is about much more than one traditional view of the fire service.
Specifically, HFRS needed campaign assets that felt professional, warm and community-minded, while still having enough personality to stand out. The aim was not simply to advertise roles. It was to show the range of people, skills, settings and stories that make up the service.
The work needed to challenge the familiar assumptions people often have about fire and rescue careers. Yes, emergency response is part of the picture, but HFRS is also about prevention, education, community support, teamwork and opportunity. The creative had to make that broader story easier to see.
They really meant...
The real problem we discovered
HFRS needed more than recruitment collateral. They needed a visual approach that helped people see themselves in the organisation.
Fire and rescue services can often be visually reduced to the same familiar imagery: fire engines, flames, helmets and action shots. Those things are part of the story, but they do not show the full breadth of the people, roles, values and community work behind the service. For a recruitment campaign especially, that matters. If the audience only sees a narrow version of the fire service, they may assume there is no place for them in it, right?
The real opportunity was to create a more personable and flexible visual world for HFRS - one that could support recruitment activity, campaign messaging, event materials and wider brand communications. Bespoke illustration gave us a way to do that. It allowed us to represent different roles, scenarios, communities and messages in a way that felt warm, distinctive and unmistakably HFRS.
What we agreed to do...
The solution/services we delivered
- Develop an illustration style inspired by HFRS’s people, work and community presence
- Use illustration to create campaign assets that felt distinctive, inclusive and flexible
- Extend the visual approach into real-world branded materials, including a 3x3 pop-up gazebo and hard stand mock-ups
- Create designs that could support recruitment activity and continue working across future campaigns
So we got to work!
The approach and process
Where did we start and why?
We started by looking at how HFRS could show more of itself - not just the emergency response side, but the people, places and moments that make the service meaningful to its communities.
The answer?
A world of personalised illustrations that made HFRS feel more human, more flexible and more memorable.
What does this actually look like?
Instead of relying on stock imagery or generic visuals, we explored how illustration could help HFRS communicate with more personality. Zoe’s illustration work became a way to create a visual language that could flex across different platforms, formats and audiences while still feeling connected to the HFRS brand.
Yeah - but what does this actually mean?
Ok - so fresh videography and personalised illustration all do the same job: they stop a brand from looking like everyone else. For HFRS, illustration and videography offered a way to depict scenarios, roles, and community moments that might be difficult to capture in a single photograph, while keeping the tone approachable and engaging.
Harnessing the HFRS colour palette and campaign thinking as the foundation, we then developed visuals that could be applied across recruitment and wider communications. The aim was to create something that felt useful, not decorative - assets that could work on social posts, printed materials, campaign graphics and physical event spaces.
That thinking then extended into mock-ups for the 3x3 pop-up gazebo and hard stand area and of course the necessary printed materials. These gave HFRS a way to imagine how the campaign identity could appear in real life, particularly at events such as passing out parades where friends, families and communities come together to celebrate new recruits.
Did it work?
In short: absolutely.
While final campaign performance is still to come, the creative work has already given HFRS a more distinctive and flexible way to show up. The illustration-led approach created a visual identity that could move beyond one asset or one campaign and begin to shape how HFRS presents itself across recruitment, events and wider communications.
Rather than relying on generic imagery, HFRS now has campaign visuals that feel more personal to them. The gazebo and hard stand concepts show how that identity can work in real spaces, helping bring consistency to public-facing moments as well as digital and printed materials.
Additional results & broader impact...
One of the biggest benefits of this work is that it gave HFRS more than just a set of designs… Something you know we’d always advocate for.
For us at KW, this is exactly why bespoke creative matters. Stock photography has its place, but it rarely captures the specific personality of a brand (you can read more on our thoughts on this here) When an organisation invests in its own photography, videography and illustration, it creates a visual language that people start to recognise. It feels more considered, more memorable and more believable.
For HFRS, the illustration route helped make the brand feel warmer and more accessible while still feeling professional. It created space to show the service as community-focused, people-led and full of opportunity - which is especially important when the goal is to encourage people from different backgrounds to consider a career they may not have imagined for themselves.
A round-up of what the work achieved
From campaign graphics to gazebo and hard stand mock-ups, the creative direction showed how personalised brand assets can bring consistency, warmth and personality to every touchpoint.
If your organisation is relying on the same stock images, generic graphics or one-size-fits-all campaign visuals, it might be time to create something that feels more like you.
At KW, we help brands build visual identities that feel distinctive, useful and full of personality!
