New logo and website to launch innovative child welfare approach

As a new program, Bridges to Better was starting from scratch from a visual and messaging perspective. We were delighted to accept the challenge of how to inspire service providers, policymakers and researchers to think about and show them how to adopt new survivor-centered, culturally-sensitive approaches to their work and practices.

Our Solution

We worked with the Futures Without Violence team to strategize around the goals for the new brand and how we could motivate key audience groups to connect with this new approach. It’s not easy to ask people to change their practices and — even more — change the systems that currently can create more harm instead of alleviating it.

Early in our process, we collaborated with Justine Swindell, a dynamic and talented DC artist of color, as she developed the flagship illustration that would set the visual tone and bring out the joyful sense of diversity and thriving community we were aiming to create.

We then designed a new logo for the program that communicated a simple yet casual and optimistic energy to anchor the brand. The logo is intentionally flexible in that the bridge shape can be any color in the color palette.

Once we had a strong brand foundation, we designed and built the new website around the three core audience groups in the strongest positions to implement this approach: direct service providers, policymakers and researchers. In addition to overview information about the Bridges to Better approach, we created different audience “journeys” for each of these groups. This includes tailored information, resources and training modules with specific calls to action.

Throughout the website, we broke out pieces of Justine’s illustration to add life and continuity to the different sections. In some areas, we created our own custom icons and pieces to complement and build out as needed.

On a functional level, we designed and developed a robust resources library with custom taxonomies and detail pages for different types of content. We also set up training modules and summary areas to provide customized pathways into different parts of the content.

While the client is still in the process of finalizing content before launching the public site, we were pleased and honored to complete the design and development of its first phase. We look forward to the launch and seeing it help create better healing experiences for children and families experiencing violence.

(Although this website is not yet public, we’re sharing it with client permission.)