Ipswich.love: a heart in the middle of Ipswich

Ipswich is a brilliant town. Sure, it has its challenges, but it can feel like a political football, kicked about by local news and social media instead of getting the praise, support and celebration it deserves.

So in 2023 I founded Ipswich.love: a not-for-profit Community Interest Company, run by a team of proud Ipswich folk, with one job. To shout about all the great stuff that happens across the whole town — not just the town centre or the Waterfront, but every neighbourhood.

Think of us as the Ipswichian Civic Pride Superfans!

There’s no hierarchy in the team and no hidden agenda behind it. Some of us grew up here, others are glad we moved here, and everyone’s contribution counts the same.

The name is the address: Ipswich.love. It says exactly what it does, and it’s easy to say out loud (handy at a networking event).

The logo takes the W out of IPSWICH and puts a big, glossy heart in its place. Read it quickly and it says Ipswich; look again and it says you love it. The letters are tall, tight and heavy, like a headline on a placard, so the heart has something solid to push against.

The heart sits dead centre, the fourth of seven letters, and that’s deliberate. It’s the people and the communities that give a town its heartbeat, not the buildings or the structures. So the people get the middle of the name.

It’s the only bit of shine in the whole identity. Everything else is flat colour, so the heart always gets looked at first.

Love Pink does the heavy lifting. It’s the heart, the buttons and the links — everywhere you’re meant to look or tap — with Deep Raspberry taking over when you hover.

Deep Sage is the calm beside all that pink. Plum is the dark: the whole site in dark mode, and the backdrop for social graphics, where the white logo and pink heart really glow. Blush and Petal, two pale pinks, fill the quieter backgrounds.

Tap a chip to copy its hex code.

The website is the engine. It lists events from commercial, community and charity organisations alike — today, tomorrow, this weekend, this month — with a directory, an event map and a weekly pick of what’s on. Anyone can post their events for free.

Set your phone or laptop to dark mode and the whole site turns plum, with the pink buttons and sage event titles glowing against it.

Then there are the love letters: residents and visitors writing to the town about what it means to them, each one’s photo cropped into a heart.

The shop greets you with “Caw’duh heck!”, and the merch carries on in broad Suffolk: On The Huh, Rum Owd Dew and Uppa Town Funk (with apologies to Bruno Mars), each set big, condensed and stacked, with the logo underneath.

On the huh means crooked, so naturally it’s printed on a slant. Every sale helps keep Ipswich.love going, so have a rummage in the shop.