Baltimore Collegetown

Hi, Kirsten,

We’ve combed through the work we’ve amassed over the years and hand-picked these case studies just for the Collegetown. As you likely know about us, most of our work is in higher education and as such we have plenty to share in that space. But take a look at the nonprofit, health, visualization, and storytelling work that we’ve done outside of education as well. There is a full range of creative, technical, and strategic know-how for you to fossilize just what kind of partner you will find in idfive.

Welcome Kirsten,

On this page, you’ll find the case studies we’ve selected especially for you. All of them showcase the talent, passion, and ingenuity we put into everything we do. Reach out if you have any questions!

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Aims Community College

Defining the voice of a community pillar.

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Aims Community College

Refreshing a Community College Brand with Lofty Aims

Aims Community College shatters the common perception of “community college,” with multiple locations and state-of-the-art facilities—including commercial-grade flight simulators, maker spaces, and a new community welcome center, to name a few features. But it lacked a cohesive brand to support its vision as a “first choice” and recognized leader in student success.

The Strategy

With an initial scope of work to analyze the current Aims brand, idfive started in a familiar place: with research, consisting of:

a brand communications audit of Aims’ existing messaging architecture, brand assets, and marketing materials.
comparative analysis of three competing colleges’ brand attributes.
an AudienceScan to determine audience sentiment (actual and desired) using surveys, interviews, and a review of existing research.
a Brand Perception Workshop to engage internal stakeholders to shape brand attributes, platform, and messaging architecture.

The final deliverables included branding, a new tagline, a refreshed mascot, a viewbook, and a brand anthem video.

Branding

After presenting our findings to the president and her cabinet, our scope of work expanded to include developing a revised Aims Brand Guide. With a refreshed brand promise and platform (including supports), a revised logo, and reenergized voice and tone, the College wanted a tagline that could succinctly express the new brand’s position. Working collaboratively with the Aims MarComm team, we launched a research-based initiative to identify a new Aims tagline

— a process that started with brainstorming sessions and ended with surveys and focus groups with major campus stakeholders.

The winner—All In—is best described by our focus group participants: “Catchy, and easy to remember.” “it’s everything we are.” “It’s an allegory and delivers a broader message.” “It’s what the Aims community is.” “Put a stamp on it.”

Aims Red

Aims Black

Aims Slate

Evolution Blue

Corn Husk

Fountain

Design

Arty the Aardvark has come to represent comfort, familiarity, friendship, and kindness. For example, at Arty’s Pantry, students receive free food and basic supplies.

Since Arty isn’t your stereotypical college athletics cheerleader (Aims doesn’t have sports) the redesigned Arty needed to be more than just another pissed off mascot. He needed to be a positive, energetic personification of the institution and community.

Through a highly collaborative and iterative process, Arty emerged—he’s a little bit “dad bod,” a lot “can-do spirit,” and All In.

https://idfive.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Arty_sketches.jpg

Viewbook

A refreshed college brand requires a bold, new recruitment publication. We wanted Aims’ new viewbook to connect with prospective students on an emotional level—a critical goal for the admissions team—while also communicating the College’s distinctions with bold visuals and user-focused content. The viewbook was also the first embodiment of the new brand guidelines we had developed for Aims, and aided in expanding on the brand’s look and feel.

To ensure the viewbook is compelling, a unique peek-a-boo cover was designed which opens to an exciting spread explaining what it means to be All In.

Video

For Aims Community College, creating a video that flips the script on who they are and what they offer was a critical next step in rallying a local and national audience of perspective and current students, staff, and the community. After partnering with idfive on an award-winning brand, “All In” tagline, mascot, and marketing materials, Aims possessed a more cohesive and effective messaging platform to articulate the Aims advantage.

With a 90-second montage of students in experiential learning environments at multiple locations and state-of-the-art facilities—including commercial-grade flight simulators, maker spaces, and a new community welcome center, idfive was able to help Aims shatter the common perception of “community college.” Our video production team helped Aims go “All In” and be recognized as a first choice option and leader in higher education.

A Baltimore City mailbox with an "I Heart City Life" bumper sticker attached to it

Live Baltimore

Recruiting residents to Charm City.

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Live Baltimore

Placing Customized Web Tools for Baltimore's Premiere Resident Recruitment Nonprofit

Live Baltimore, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to recruit and retain Baltimore City residents, needed a new website that could convince a wide range of potential renters and homebuyers why Baltimore is the right place for them to find a home and stay long-term.

It also needed to offer them the tools and resources to do so.

278

Neighborhoods in Baltimore

We cherish every chance we get to work for awesome clients with incredible missions such as these guys. Live Baltimore is an important hometown brand charged with showcasing how Baltimore City is a fantastic place to raise a family, work, and play. And our website does exactly that for them.

Andres Zapata

Founder

Strategy

How do you promote a “city of neighborhoods” and connect potential residents to the areas that best fit their needs, priorities, and preferences? idfive developed an interactive quiz that matches potential homebuyers and renters with the City’s neighborhoods according to major criteria such as:

Cost
Neighborhood “vibe”
Commuting distance to work

Site visitors have the option to set up My Personalized Moving Planner, an account that stores neighborhood recommendations, provides access to financial incentive programs, receive one-on-one consultations with Live Baltimore staff members, and connect with participating real estate agents who specialize in select neighborhoods.

Webpages for each neighborhood offer a glimpse of what it’s like to live there, with “At A Glance” information providing:

Estimated mortgage
Estimated rent
Median Home Purchase Price
Home types
Percentage of residents who own/rent

UX Design

A “Meet Your Neighbors” callout section provides links to community organizations and homeowners associations, and many neighborhood pages feature residents who share an insider’s look and who users can contact directly for more information — a uniquely personal touch.

The nonprofit’s homebuying resources are also easily accessible through user-tested navigation, as well as information about Baltimore city services; public and private schools (with map); major employers; colleges and universities; and homeowner incentive and loan programs.

Development

Our developers love a challenge. Here’s what they loved about the Live Baltimore redesign, by the numbers:

The site has integrations with at least 9 supporting services—Salesforce, Google Maps, Recaptcha, Walkscore, YouTube, Vimeo, Eventbrite, Google Translate, and Sendgrid.
The design includes 14 different content types, 12 with the capability of being saved to user profiles.
The three different maps share as much code as possible, but serve different functions and have different requirements.

https://idfive.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/idfive_website_internals_casestudy-–-7.png

The Result

An engaging, entertaining, and informative website that is as unique as the city it promotes.

An art patron wearing headphones looks out over a railing at an art installation, a mixed media tunnel sculpture

Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower

Bringing 289 feet of artistic energy to life.

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Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower

The Challenge

Supported by the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts (BOPA), the Bromo Seltzer Arts tower is an iconic landmark that rents studio space to the Baltimore area’s most talented visual and literary artists. It’s a space for dreamers, makers and doers of all kinds to create their work, but with an outdated website, the welcoming spirit and artistic energy that floats through the 15-story building was lost on the online visit. In order to show the Tower’s true colors and draw in more renters, BOPA needed a new website that could capture the building’s creative atmosphere, its value to working artists and appeal to locals and tourists of all kinds.

The Solution

The new Bromo Tower website is a window into the prominent Baltimore landmark. The website’s layout–with callouts to resident artist and their work, arts-based events and a description of the neighborhood—reveal a welcoming artistic community, while the design of each webpage conveys an overall creative energy unique to the Tower. Additionally, an interactive virtual-tour glimpses at the Tower’s history, amenities and residents, allowing prospective renters to picture themselves in the tower before they even visit. The finished website shows just how perfect the tower is for working artists, allowing BOPA to not only draw in more renters, but to also promote the arts community that they support.

Carthage College

Showcasing the depth of a lakeside leader.

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Carthage College

Using Informed Web Design to Showcase the Depth of a Liberal Arts Education

With its stunning location, market-focused academic offerings, and comprehensive career development program, Carthage College’s liberal arts education continues to evolve to meet changing needs. But many students and families don’t know that it’s an opportunity that’s within their reach.

Carthage needed a redesigned website that speaks boldly of its promise, achievements, and vision for the future.

Strategy

idfive’s comprehensive discovery phase—including a complete site audit and extensive stakeholder interviews—revealed that Carthage had a powerful story to tell. The College’s website had solid fundamentals in place, but definitely needed a refresh: a lot had happened at Carthage and in the world since the site was launched in 2016. To take the next step, we needed to:

Develop a unifying theme to tell the Carthage story more succinctly, effectively, and boldly
Challenge expectations of what a college website is
Take the website from good to great.

UX

As we worked collaboratively with the Carthage marketing and communications team, clear themes began to emerge that would inform and unify the site’s architecture, design, and content. Chief among these were the deep personal connections that students made at the College; the spirit of exploration and discovery that is instilled in the culture; and a uniquely beautiful lakefront setting, an hour’s drive from the vibrant urban centers of Chicago and Milwaukee.

I chose Carthage because it has amazing scholarships for foreign language, impressive professors who work closely with their students, and the lake. Looking out your dorm window and seeing sailboats on Lake Michigan can't be beat. Caroline Cardamone 2021

Design

Balancing Carthage’s distinctive primary red with a secondary blue palette reinforces one of Carthage’s major differentiators: it’s distinctive Lake Michigan shoreline. Wave motifs, reflected both horizontally and vertically, continue the theme and connect with the hero image headline: Your Turn To Make Waves.

156

Total number of Carthage stakeholders engaged in the discovery process

“This project wouldn’t have been possible without the support and insight of the Carthage team. My only regret is not getting to see beautiful Lake Michigan in person.”

Andrew White

Director of User Experience and Information Design, idfive

Media Buying & Planning

Early campaign results attribute a 44% increase in enrollment applications in the first 4 months of the campaign compared to the previous period and 11% increase YOY.

44%

increase in apps received in the first 4 months

The Results

The early response from the Carthage community was overwhelmingly positive, as reflected in these Instagram posts:

“Lookin good” 😍 😉
“It looks awesome!”

More than that, however, the recruitment campaign is delivering a substantial boost in qualified applications.

https://idfive.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Social-Section-01.jpg

Colgate students hurry to their classes on a sunny day in early fall, the chapel visible in the background

Colgate University

Celebrating 200 years.

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Colgate University

BUILDING A MODERN WEBSITE FOR AN HISTORICAL HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTION

Colgate University, a prestigious private university in central New York, is globally recognized for offering an innovative curriculum and an experience dedicated to career outcomes, on a sprawling, bucolic, rustic campus. Showcasing the Colgate experience cohesively across several digital touchpoints was a rewarding opportunity that continues to evolve through our ongoing partnership.

“Finding the right partner may have been our most important step. We understood that we were not only seeking a partner to build our website but one who would also fill the role of the teacher as we learned a new hosting environment and CMS.”

Jason Kammerdiener

Web Manager, Colgate University

The Challenge

Colgate wanted to upgrade their CMS to a more modern, sustainable platform. With the help of idfive, this project underwent an intensive stakeholder discovery to determine the priorities, requirements, functionality, and architecture needed to support a bustling, evolving institution.

The Result

The result was a beautifully redesigned site built on the Drupal 8 CMS platform, with the flexibility to continue to grow. With more than 1,500 pages migrated by a hybrid team of Colgate staff and idfivers, the new site was positively received by the Colgate community immediately upon launch.

200

Years of history to share

“The idfive team really had fun with this project! Partnering with Colgate to tell a story that means so much to alumni, current students, faculty and the surrounding Hamilton, NY community was rewarding. The site enables visitors to relive a sense of pride and look forward to a Colgate’s dynamic future.”

Jake Tarbert

Associate VP

The Challenge

How do you tell the story of a venerable institution’s two-century legacy without getting lost in the past? How do we bring history to life while positioning a bold vision for the future? Taking both of these challenges to mind, idfive developed a content strategy based on historic artifacts, an interactive timeline, and an invitation for the community to share their own Colgate experiences.

https://idfive.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Colgate_Bicentennial_1Large.jpg

The Result

With an enhanced design developed to embrace and celebrate this golden celebration, we launched a site that worked flawlessly across every platform and blended seamlessly into the architecture of the main Colgate website.

The Challenge

When the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 brought campus visits for prospective students to a halt, Colgate recognized that digitally showcasing the full Colgate experience – campus included – was paramount to encouraging students to commit. Colgate turned to idfive to translate their This is Colgate and Outcomes printed viewbooks into rich, engaging online experiences for prospective students and their families.

To keep these online Viewbooks sustainable year-over-year, we developed an information architecture and modular user experience that allowed content to be interchangeable and updatable as information about the University changed while retaining the flow and narrative of the Viewbooks’ print counterparts.

The Result

The site was then designed and developed to be CMS-agnostic, for maximum flexibility. The result was a collaborative content migration and a rapid launch to reach prospects during commitment season.

The Partnership Continues

In addition to major projects with our partners at Colgate, idfive serves as the University’s web and digital support partner. Building a lasting understanding of Colgate’s diverse digital landscape, we’re able to continue being nimble, responsive, and effective to meet the needs of this vibrant institution.

Nighttime photo of the Milky Way visible over a mountainous horizon

Johns Hopkins APL Civil Space

Expressing the wonder of space exploration.

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Johns Hopkins APL Civil Space

DESIGNING AND DEVELOPING A SPACE EXPLORATION WEBSITE AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT

The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) Civil Space project needed a brand new website to communicate the magnitude and “cool factor” of their work — from defending the planet from asteroids to unraveling the mysteries of the universe — to multiple audiences. And they needed it in nine months. It was rocket science. Literally.

Check out the APL Civil Space website.

Going Boldly

Sure, idfive developers had created interactive maps before. But to meet the challenge of galaxy travel, they created a destination map of the universe — going boldly where no developers have gone before.

Number of templates, including an interactive galaxy map

Strategy

Following our tried-and-true script, an idfive team kicked off the project with our Discover360™ process. We spoke with scientists, engineers, management, marketers, and educators. [A side note: These are some awesome, inspiring folks, some of whom worked on the country’s first space program in the ’60s.] We surveyed a wide cross-section of potential site visitors. We geeked out on web analytics and content audits (not to mention interstellar space), and scoped out what others in the field are doing. Armed with all of that data, we were able to share with our partners a creative brief and strategic direction that would inform everything from site architecture to design. Our aha moment: The site needed to appeal to a wide range of audiences — from middle-school students to rocket scientists — without confusing the one or condescending to the other.

Then COVID-19 hit.

But the idfive team and our APL Civil Space partners refused to let a global pandemic get in the way of our momentum. We switched our brainstorming workshop to a virtual format and presented the first rounds of a proposed Information Architecture and wireframes. Following revisions and approvals, we moved to the design phase and presented three concepts. Elements from all three were incorporated into the final design.

To meet the tight timeline and maximize budget, our developers completed the front- and back-end work concurrently with the design phase, relishing challenges like building a map-of-the-galaxy app. Our copywriters made sure that the final copy would appeal to space novices and rocket scientists alike.

Design

The visuals needed to be as awe-inspiring and compelling as space itself. Our design “North Star,” as pointed out in the project creative brief: “Think of the first time you saw the night sky on a clear, moonless night — away from artificial light or interference.” One picture = 1,000 words.

Development

idfive developers took the challenge of engaging site visitors to a new level by creating a Drupal 8 widget with Augmented Reality and 3-D assets that delivers state-of-the-art space instruments to your screen. Or maybe you have an iOS and want to drop the New Horizons spacecraft on your kitchen counter.

Conclusion

The APL Civil Space website engages school children, rocket scientists, and everyone in between with a richly visual, highly interactive experience — one that piques curiosity, encourages further exploration, and induces wonder. Just like the night sky on a clear, moonless night.

Three U-Dub students sit on a bench on campus

University of Washington College of Arts & Sciences

Giving voice to the liberal arts.

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University of Washington College of Arts & Sciences

The Challenge

In a world dominated by science, technology, engineering and mathematics, what is the role of the liberal arts? After all, if the “value” of a college education is the immediate return on investment, how can the liberal arts compete with highly-valued majors such as engineering or the applied sciences (eg. computer science)?

Strategy

Our Discover360 process also revealed that the University of Washington College of Arts & Sciences also suffered from a crisis of identity: at a university dominated by scientific research and technological innovation what was the role of the College in the entire UW web ecosystem? The answer came from the students we spoke to. What they cared about was what interested them. Out of this insight came the philosophy that drove our redesign efforts: “Let the Majors Speak for, and Define, The College.”

Design

If the majors were going to speak for the College, the design had to feature their essence: the students and their environments at the university. Our design concept put the people of the College first, highlighting their diversity and their activities while studying at one of the most beautiful institutions in the United States.

Development

At a time when many Colleges of Arts & Sciences/Liberal Arts were shying away from their liberal arts roots, the UW College of Arts and Sciences decided to prioritize their commitment to the liberal arts, emphasizing the liberal arts’ relevance to 21st-century work. We communicated this through interactive tools for prospective students to show that the liberal arts and sciences could lead directly to fulfilling careers.

Conclusion

Our redesign has helped the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington redefine what it means to study the liberal arts in the 21st century, emphasizing both the diversity of thought and the diversity of the student body of the College. Through the use of both stunning imagery and interactive tools that help visitors discover what the liberal arts can mean in the twenty-first century, the new website doesn’t just open up the College to a new generation of visitors but also helps recontextualize and more sharply define the College’s role as part of the greater University of Washington.

https://idfive.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/UW_text_2image_image_02_1906x1372.jpg

An elaborately costumed dancer twirls during a staged production, causing a long rainbow banner to billow outward into a spiral

UMD Arts & Humanities

Advocating for the arts and the humanities.

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UMD Arts & Humanities

The Challenge

For the University of Maryland College of Arts and Humanities, a website redesign was an opportunity to bolster the reputation of the college for both internal and external audiences. While the college serves a majority of the University’s students through core education requirements, it isn’t always thought of as its own entity. To correct this misconception, the website needed to provide compelling answers to a simple question: What is the College of Arts and Humanities? With 14 unique departments (and numerous centers, institutes, and galleries) all housed under one roof, answering this question became complex. How could the new site communicate the shared goal of exposing people to new and innovative ways of thinking about the human experience?

The Solution

Informed by audience and stakeholder interviews and an in-depth website scan, the redesigned website highlights the College of Arts and Humanities’ vital role in education, research, and advocacy. The new design offers the flexibility to feature student, faculty, and alumni achievements through engaging homepage interactivity and microinteractions, while additional content allows for easy exploration and provides a vibrant space to celebrate the work of the College. Accessible, mobile-first design and content structure aimed at triaging audience needs ensures a positive and on-brand experience for all users.

UMD Arts & Humanities website viewed on mobile device

https://idfive.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/umd_arhu_solution1.jpg

Four young adults chat over coffee at a table in a brightly lit common area with large windows on Sheppard Pratt's new campus

Sheppard Pratt Baltimore Washington Campus

Setting a new standard in mental health care.

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Sheppard Pratt Baltimore Washington Campus

Generating Awareness and Excitement for a New Beacon of Mental Healthcare

Sheppard Pratt is the nation’s largest nonprofit mental healthcare provider, and they recently completed construction on a state-of-the-art new mental health facility near 1-95 and BWI that’s accessible to regional and national patients. The challenge? Breaking through preconceived notions of what mental health “looks like” to spread the word and build excitement for the new campus, while introducing a new image of compassionate care in a space designed to promote dignity and compassion.

The Strategy

The opening of the Baltimore/Washington campus provided Sheppard Pratt with a unique opportunity. As it has done throughout its 150-year history, it is setting the standard of excellence in mental health care. With a humanistic, therapeutic design—patient rooms face wooded areas or interior courtyards, ensuring privacy and capitalizing on the healing power of nature—the new hospital shatters the mental health facility stereotype. We saw that the hospital could be a metaphor for where mental health is going, and destigmatize mental health treatment along the way. And opening in the midst of a pandemic, the hospital provided its patients and the region even more than unparalleled expertise: it provided hope.

The “Hope is Here” campaign encapsulated the positive emotional component of the Baltimore/Washington campus with a dual meaning: Sheppard Pratt is where people can find help, and a new facility is here to provide compassionate care.

Media

Campaign tactics and channels included:

Facebook retargeting and prospecting
Local news placements
Geo-fencing
Digital Audio
Digital Billboards
Underwriting radio spots on WYPR, the local NPR station
Light pole banners
Magazine spreads
Community center signage
Custom Logo Gobo Spotlight

Branding

The visual treatment positioned the new facility as a place of light, order, and calm, consistent with the space’s soft, warm color palettes. By utilizing some of the colors, layout, and the mandala graphic from Sheppard Pratt’s previous media campaign, the campaign provided brand continuity while introducing a bold, exciting new chapter for the organization.

Green

Light Green

Sky

4.4

The campaign search engine marketing CTR; the healthcare industry benchmark is 1.8%.

With mental health services needed now more than ever, I’m proud of the role our team played in building local awareness of the new Baltimore/Washington campus and its accessibility to everyone in the area.

Jill Sprague

Associate Director of Media

The Result

Across all platforms, the campaign performed at or above healthcare industry benchmarks

Leveraging the campaign’s success, ”Hope is Here” became the branding for the grand opening event, Sheppard Pratt’s 2021 annual report, and the hospital itself: www.sheppardpratt.org/hopeishere.

2.6

Million impressions from all campaign paid media sources

Howard University “The Dig”

Unifying the news hub of a flagship HBCU.

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Howard University “The Dig”

Designing an Integrated Web Platform for University Communications

Howard University’s Office of University Communications (OUC) manages an extensive portfolio of print and web properties, including the University’s main site, Newsroom, and Howard Magazine.

With its Newsroom, Calendar, and Howard Magazine websites in Drupal 7, scheduled for an end-of-life in November 2022, the OUC had an opportunity to create a new platform to meet its long-term communications needs.

50

Number of Howard web properties that receive distributed content from The Dig.

"Helping Howard showcase their excellence, community, and vision through this redesign was intensely rewarding. We were committed to re-imagining multiple aspects of their news hub: how stories are discovered, the themes guiding those stories, and the visual language."

Pat Balasavage

SR. USER EXPERIENCE AND INTERFACE DESIGNER

The Strategy

A project with an overarching goal this ambitious—to create a communications centerpiece that would speak to the internal and external audiences of one of the country’s leading historically Black Colleges and Universities—needed to start with extensive research. Our work began with a thorough Discovery process, including remote workshops with members of the Howard communications team that helped uncover internal editorial governance gaps and define the overall spirit of the project. From that collaboration, three themes emerged as central to the Howard story: Research, Community, Philanthropy.

The site also needed to highlight the achievements of Howard’s students, faculty, staff, and alumni, as well as celebrate the “change makers”—those in the Howard community who actively commit to positive social change. With themes and imperatives agreed upon, the idfive team developed an information architecture and wireframes with taxonomy terms to represent the best of Howard University. The taxonomies enabled the Howard team to implement a more effective Create Once Publish Everywhere (COPE) strategy across the institution’s major communications platforms.

UX Design

During user research, we discovered the need to balance the traditional brand look, but address the Howard team’s appetite for boldness and pushing the brand. While the site keeps the recognizable Howard blue, we made sure to use well-placed accents and white space to create areas of color and contrast. Angled elements and a variety of layouts were incorporated throughout the site to “break out of the box,” countering the grid-heavy structure of many news publications. We also emphasized high-quality photography, especially when featuring faces of the Howard community.

The final design leaves site visitors feeling:

Educated, as a reliable source of information with a unique perspective.
Uplifted, with a sense of success and progress.
Trust, that Howard is a worthwhile investment.
Pride, in the tapestry of the Black community.

And how users feel is central to our “neurodesign ux” practice.

Development

idfive developers took extra care to make sure the user experience came to life through hover effects and subtle animations, which help increase the feel of interactivity sitewide. The team also developed a wide variety of hero treatments to keep the different pages fresh, enhance engagement, and drive action.

african american woman with light hair holding coffee

https://idfive.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Text-Two-Images-1906x1372-1.png

The Result

The Dig has become the “single source of truth” for Howard University, with relevant content that can be easily shared across platforms.

Deep space photograph displays a distant star cluster and nebula

Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

Building a universal brand for astrophysics.

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Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

The Challenge

Since its founding over half a century ago, the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian became one of the leading astronomy and astrophysics centers in the world. But brilliant research didn’t necessarily translate into a brand that told a clear story of who they are and how their discoveries continue to expand humanity’s knowledge of our universe.

Research

We began our engagement with CfA with a two-pronged approach, reviewing existing communications and interviewing some of their top researchers and leadership. To gain an outside view, we also interviewed research partners, funders, and advisory board members. We had two clear goals in mind: understand the CfA, and find out how they’re perceived by the world.

850+

Researchers and staff.

For a life-long space nerd like me, working with CfA was an amazing experience. It was such an incredible privilege to get to interview some of the leading astronomers and astrophysicists in the world and learn more about the discoveries CfA has made and continues to make every day. I know all of us at idfive are immensely proud of the fact that our work is helping CfA tell their story better so they can continue to expand humanity’s understanding of the universe.

Sean Carton

Chief Strategist

Strategy

Our research revealed two key data points: 1) The CfA is regarded as one of the world’s leading astrophysics organizations; but 2) nobody really understood their structure, and that misunderstanding often led to difficulties in securing funding or recruiting scientists. They were doing some of the most amazing science in the world, but outsiders were confused about who was doing it.

Branding

We realized that in order to tell the true story of CfA, their name had to change. We wanted it to communicate CfA’s preeminent position in astronomy and astrophysics while communicating the equity of Harvard’s and the Smithsonian’s contributions. The new name – The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian did exactly that, emphasizing science over structure.

Design

We wanted to create a visual presentation of the new name to reflect the CfA’s long commitment to science and collaborative discovery. The symbolic gradient of the logo is reminiscent of a stellar spectrum—a key tool of astronomy instantly recognizable by their external audiences—while the logo’s contemporary typography speaks to both today and tomorrow’s discoveries.

CFA RED

CFA VIOLET

Website

The redesigned CfA website, published in March 2021, features copy guided by updated messaging and a design informed by updated brand visuals. The website’s content strategy puts science first by prioritizing ongoing research via a “Big Questions” section, and highlighting research, people, and facilities within the navigation.

Conclusion

Through all of our work, idfive has helped the CfA navigate a complicated institutional environment to ultimately implement a clear, compelling, and consistent brand that speaks to both internal and external audiences. United and energized by the new brand and marketing, communications, and fundraising tools, the CfA can now focus on the incredible research and discoveries that lie ahead.

There’s more where that came from.

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