⟡ CHALLENGES

The organisation lacked a cohesive brand strategy & identity, making it difficult to engage new donors & partners. The gamified donation platform was poorly structured with unclear mechanics, and its development lacked vision & direction, leading to overall inefficiency.

⟡ ROLE

As Creative Director, I led the creative team & collaborated with key stakeholders to develop the brand strategy & identity while shaping the overall business strategy. I also guided external vendors & a team of 12 volunteers in co-creating designs & marketing materials.

⟡ OBJECTIVES

Create a unique brand strategy to attract new users, incl. marketing plans with clear messaging, content ideas, & timelines. Design a donation-rewarding game, craft fundraising pitch decks, & explore new income streams for sustainable operations.

⟡ OUTCOMES

The new brand led to a rise in both donors & grants, highly boosting overall donations. This resulted in partnerships with 10 organisations & celebrity advocates, as well as invitations to speak at major events. The newly created design processes improved efficiency & turnover.

Molding the core brand strategy

We ran multiple brand strategy workshops with key stakeholders & core members to discover how we could position the org in the market, who the target audiences were, how we'd want to stand out from competitors, what the major goals are, what the tone of voice + look & feel should be, etc.

With newfound clarity on what we wanted to be & become, we used the core principles as a starting point when heading into designing. With this clearer outline, new pitch decks creation and talks with potential investors went way smoother given everyone on the team had a shared vision in mind.

Vision

We collaborate to create a
world with net-zero emissions.

Mission

We empower people to take action
on our emission-reducing missions.

Purpose

We strive to create a habitable
bright future, one step at a time.

Together with fellow designer, Natasha Fallas Calderón, we explored a few directions for the brand identity through styleframes. We tried to figure out the balance of imagery, colors, typography, tone of voice and how much inspiration we should take from videogames, while staying clear that it's a climate organisation.

Throughout the process we took inspiration from games like The Journey, Firewatch, and other games with a minimal yet expressive artstyle. We mimicked these styles as it was subdued enough to make it not feel like a full-fledged game whilst making it more feasible to create imagery & assets for in terms of production speed and budgets.

Logo revamping

Crafting the Zewmans

Just like in games, we wanted users to have their own avatar which they could personalise and level up every time they'd contribute to a project. After researching and testing what would be a fitting character, we settled on creating our own version of a Kodama; a Japanese folklore figure that was said to be the protector of the natural land.

Our version is a bit more humanoid in it's proportions. Various props allows users to customise the avatar to their liking and express what they stand for. They also made great incentives as give-aways for users who would donate to specific projects or causes, similar to collectibles, increasing the total amount of donations substantially.

Kodama's as seen in Studio Ghibli's movie; Princess Mononoke.

Quick layout sketches before going to final rendering

3D key-visual for the website' splashpage by Studio Nuts.

Mockup of a Zewman's customisation page

Share a post about a rainforest restoration project and get a forest-themed staff, donate to a water-cleaning project and get a limited edition water-themed mask, etc. Albeit simple, its a mechanic that works well to keep people engaged and give them a sense of ownership and have them invested over longer periods of time compared to one-time donations.

Making it tangible

A lot of NGO websites tend to have a pretty overwhelming amount of content, lack good UX and tend to have a too serious tone of voice compared to what we wanted to go for. During the wireframing stage, we took inspiration from other sites that were more lean, had clearer call-to-actions and contained more fun copy, like Netflix, Oatly and Alphaputt.

Victor Isichei user-tested it with the target audience, showing an increase in engagement and quicker navigation. Overall it was seen as more fun, clearer due to there not being an overwhelming amount of pages and with a strong incentive to join given you'd get something in return for joining and donating.

Flow structures for sponsor advertisement tiers

Homepage flow tests

Bringing it all together

After laying the foundation, we created a brandguide to capture the essence of Zero Emissions World's mission, vision and design guidelines. We distilled the essentials so that any internal & external person could craft something that match the overal vibe without an overkill of details.

We gave staff & vendors wiggleroom to experiment so we could adapt & refine the brand identity over time based on real-time feedback from both staff and end-users. Especially for new brands, its important to figure out what works and optimise from there.

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