Sophisticated solutions for complex problems.

From positioning and messaging strategy to logos, color palettes and typography, we take a strategic approach to branding. We seek out the essence of an organization, the needs of its audience and the noise in the marketplace. We craft brands that are unique and differentiated.

Defining the Brand Strategy
We tailor our research to best serve each project—from brand and competitive audits to user testing and internal stakeholder interviews. We are transparent with our findings, and we partner closely with our clients to refine these insights. This research forms the foundation of your new brand.

Articulating the Message
With the brand strategy in place, we craft and define the voice of your brand, which can include naming, core values, positioning and messaging platforms.

Designing the Look
Building on the strategy and voice, we design a robust visual identity—logo, typography, color palette, graphics and imagery styles. We ensure that each visual element works coherently across every touchpoint, from business papers to digital resources, print to environmental.

Delivering Final Files and Style Guide
We provide all logo files and visual assets as well as a brand style guide that outlines your brand’s visual mechanics and best practices. At the conclusion of our engagement, you’ll have every detail and resource of your new brand in hand.

Our user-centric website development process solves complex challenges online by aligning your business goals with audience needs. We create sites based on highly-relevant, streamlined digital interactions. Our goal is to enable users to access the resources and information they seek—and encourage return visits to your site to deepen their engagement with your brand.

Creating in 5D
We’ve created a disciplined process using what we call the 5 Ds: Discover (research, findings and strategy), Define (User Experience and feature sets), Design (visual aesthetics, content strategy, prototyping, testing), Develop (build and technology integration), Deploy (training and launch).

Starting with your Users
To put your audiences first, we create nuanced user personas and customer journeys to keep the goals, actions and pain points of the target audiences top of mind. We prototype user pathways and layouts, and include user testing to ensure designs are both effective and intuitive.

Designing Mobile-First
Leading with a design for mobile devices ensures usability across all platforms and relevance in today’s mobile dominated landscape.

Ensuring Accessibility
We are trained in digital accessibility and inclusive design, from color contrast and type size to keyboard navigation and screen readers, following the industry standard Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0).

Creating a Custom CMS
We design modularly and deliver a Content Management System that gives you complete control of the structure and content of your site. We provide thorough documentation and train key members of your team, enabling them to update your site and build new sections and pages with ease in real time.

While remaining an essential financial account for key stakeholders, annual reports are increasingly seen as opportunities to enhance fundraising, market new developments and promote social responsibility and diversity efforts. Our annual reports process includes:

Defining a Strategy
We start with research that not only examines current trends in the space, but also defines the unique role your annual report can play in elevating your profile and advancing your strategic priorities.

Developing a Powerful Theme and Visual Concept
With research complete, we create two visual directions for you to choose from. Each direction works to build and communicate a central theme that aligns with your priorities.

Designing the Report in Print and Online
Once the final direction is selected, we consider every detail of both the printed and online report. We design with rich custom infographics and charts as well as commissioned photography and video to enhance engagement and communicate key messages. We also coordinate production and printing, ensuring the delivery of a best-in-class finished product.

Expanding Online Content
A digital version of your report is essential to ensure engagement across all channels. Our annual report microsites can include a richer experience to further showcase the year’s activities, including interactive content not possible in printed reports.

Our approach to fundraising is based in research and best practices. We understand donor giving preferences and patterns as well as their expectations of a gift’s social ROI. We balance storytelling with data, and authenticity with impact.

Researching Donor Motivations
We create each campaign based on thorough research into the unique value your campaign offers. We find out what matters most to donors committed to your cause and use that understanding to guide our creative and strategic approach. Our research can include stakeholder interviews, market research and interactive workshops to define themes, areas of focus, key audience goals and more.

Defining Campaign Strategy and Communications
Armed with validated research, we craft a fundraising communications strategy and identify the most effective suite of materials to reach existing and prospective donors—whether it’s a microsite, printed collateral, social media posts, videos or emails.

Designing the Materials
From capital campaigns to annual funds, major gifts to integrated campaigns, we bring a strategic approach to every aspect of the creative process, whether it is coming up with a campaign name and messaging framework, to building out the branding and visual aesthetics.

Producing Materials that Stand Apart
We bring our designs to life, both in print and online, with a production process that ensures quality results, including any specialty printing techniques needed to elevate case statements and other key pieces.

We create strategic brand narratives that articulate what you stand for and, more importantly, why it matters to your audience. We research your brand, survey your competition and differentiate your organization with messaging that inspires engagement.

Uncovering Your Story
We start with research such as industry and competitive audits, stakeholder interviews and focus groups to uncover the heart of your organization’s story.

Defining the Brand Voice and Content Strategy
Based on insights gleaned from research and our collaboration with your team, we define the brand voice and craft a content strategy to guide content creation and governance.

Telling Your Story Consistently
With the strategy and voice defined, we position your organization with messaging that articulates your value, engages your audiences and ensures consistency across all communications

Creating Copy that Convinces and Inspires
We create content that is both aligned to your strategy and tailored to specific audiences and communications, from fundraising initiatives to promotional brochures, webpages to social media—and everything in between.

Training Your Teams
To ensure consistency, we conduct training sessions for any content creators on your team on all aspects of your new content strategy and copy creation guidelines.

Learn more about our process in our Brand Messaging Frameworks blog post.