Global Forum for Civic Affairs

Who: A client trying to open global channels of communication between the world’s scholars to democratize information.

What they needed: A brand refresh and a site that would let visitors know what they wanted to do and why it was important.

What I did: Led research along with a UX Strategist, created and documeted the design system, designed the website and found a way to sneak some fun motion design in, handed off the designs to engineering, and did QA for the desktop and mobile versions.

Research and Strategy

I began with a workshop to determine the client’s visual preference and to help them think through the content that would appear on their page. I took the findings from this workshop to develop wireframes and a style tile to present to them. A style tile (right) lets designers quickly assemble a visual system to present to the client before spending time designing an actual web pages and having to then go back and revise them entirely if the client doesn’t like the direction. We worked through one round of revisions, mostly around color palette, before moving into the final designs.

The annotated wireframes can be viewed by clicking the link below.

The client and I wanted to make sure there were clear borders between content areas, but wanted to make sure they felt connected and flowed together. We achieved this with the overlapping shapes seen here, and the fading transition seen in the page animation below.

A series of glyphs were created to represent GFCA’s six Strategies for Change. The client didn’t want anything objective for these to make sure they would work across cultures. It was challenging to communicate imagery like global connections and mentorship through circles and triangles, but the results are pleasing to look at and lent themselves well to motion design.