United for impact
Rethinking United Way of Greater Philadelphia & Southern New Jersey’s website to be more compelling towards their poverty fight and showcase their regional impact.
Team: Mighty Engine
Client: United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey
Role: Graphic Design Consultant & Web Designer
Details: Finished April 2021
United Way came to Mighty Engine looking to energize its digital brand presence reflecting its updated brand identity across its nine-county region territory. Through a new messaging framework focused on positive, community, and people-focused stories, we looked to create a web experience that resonated with current donors and supporters and motivated new ones as well.
During this project, my role was to work alongside United Way’s Chief Marketing and Communications Officer to provide consultancy on the brand guidelines and wireframe and design the majority of the web pages and web elements. To create an experience that felt more humanistic and connecting, we implemented handwritten typography and photos that captured people working together for the greater good, along with an additional color to the palette that felt representational of the Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey region.
Website: unitedforimpact.org
defining
the flow.
Creating a flowchart allowed us to see how the site would be organized. The client had some features in mind so I made sure to discuss them and include them in the plan.
wire framing.
Once we defined the flow and better understood what screens were needed, I proceeded by creating wireframes to explore the experience in more detail on a screen-by-screen level. The main focus was figure out the base layout for all the initiative pages while also finding better ways to depict United Way’s impact.
visual exploration.
We then moved to explore the overall look of the website. We first created a mood-board to help lead our visual direction.
With an established mood-board we moved forward creating three landing page mock-ups using the same layout but different styles.
brand updates.
With a visual direction in mind, it was time to solidify this United Way’s brand standards. We added additional colors and typography to their regional brand to make it feel more representative of their specific counties.
Color Additions.
I worked along side the United Way marketing and design team to find an additional color that would give the Greater Philadelphia and S. New Jersey brand a differentiation in the web of United Ways.
The greenish-turquoise color was pulled from local brands and sports teams palettes, in which we noticed the area supporting, hoping to give the brand a local feel.
We also added a new font to the their local typography guidelines. This new “media font” was a hand-written humanistic typeface called Gold Night, which was utilized to create a more people-centric and story telling aesthetic.
Font Updates.
final UI.
Once we were set on the brand standards and a visual direction, I proceeded with designing the final landing page and user interface for desktop, tablet and mobile.
