Project Overview
In my experience helping non-profits translate their stories into visual presentations, I know there is no one point at which the story is “done” and ready to be designed into an engaging, interactive experience.
Painting the full picture of PWF, and their investment in racial and economic justice, requires many different types of writing, photography, and content presentation in order to communicate the full ecosystem of the work they do. When designing around a large volume of content, there’s a temptation to “dig in,” start from the beginning, and dream up a new design for every new type of content that comes through. But this approach quickly leads to inconsistency, unhelpful complexity, and a large development task list.
I drew on my knowledge of UX and development processes to create a system of components to implement once and use many times. This flexible approach to design helps create a digital home for content that can live and breath with the evolving mission of a non-profit organization. Additionally, it democratizes the design process so that multiple designers can contribute to the system and evolve it with creativity.
My Role
:
Senior Visual Designer
I think this project is a great example of what can happen when design teams have the time and space to try new processes. Though I typically played a visual designer / art director role on this team, for this project I saw an opportunity to focus on bridging the gap between content strategy and brand design. While I did participate in refining the visual brand identity, my main contribution was in transforming content into visual patterns, while my teammates took those patterns and applied visual design styling.
