After five years of groundbreaking work, CTCL felt it was time to more effectively articulate their mission and accomplishments. We worked with their founders to refresh their brand messaging and visual identity, website design, and implement a new CMS.

We conducted an extensive discovery process, interviewing more than 15 local election officials, civic data practitioners and similar organizations in their space. We wanted to unlock the essence of who CTCL is and what makes them unique. These conversations presented a clear message about the organization’s expertise in developing a thriving voting election system.

Fellows Program
Celebrating 20 years of supporting writers and filmmakers’ bold, new ideas.

After 20 years, 200 fellows and more than 100 projects, the Fellows Program remains a core part of New America’s identity. The program’s team looked to us to develop collateral that would celebrate the incredible breadth of work from the last 20 years. It needed to be the kind of piece that would stop people in their tracks, especially current program supporters and potential funders.

We designed a frame worthy poster for VIPs and a four-sided, fold-out marketing collateral for distribution to potential funders. These pieces incorporated the existing New America branding while taking its look and feel up a notch, giving the Fellows program a chance to shine on its own. Together with their team, we crafted copy that succinctly captured the essence of what makes the Fellows program unique.

The biggest change came with a major overhaul of their logo mark. Ultimately, they wanted — and we achieved — a look and feel that matched both the professionalism of their organization and the innovative spirit of their work and staff.

We created all the tools CTCL would need to launch the refreshed brand around the country — including distinctive custom typography, a vibrant colour palette, photography guidelines featuring distictive imagery, and helpful yet attitudinal tone of voice principles.

Driving long-term engagement with book lovers and writers.

Throughout its 20-year history, the Fellows program has had sustained support from book lovers and writers. But the staff rarely reached out to these folks with consistent, engaging content outside of the annual announcement of the new class of Fellows. The Fellows staff recognized this communication gap and came to us seeking transformative digital communications with its supporters.

Our twin goals were to engage book lovers and writers in the program outside of the announcement of new fellows; and to hype the Fellows and generate excitement about their upcoming projects.

We worked with the program’s staff to outline a new strategy and creative vision. Together, we created a new visual language and identity for the Fellow’s monthly newsletter, and shifted the tone to strike a balance between conversational and “in-the-know”. In January 2019, the program launched its inaugural issue of the “Fifth Draft: While you’re waiting for edits” to thousands of supporters.