24 Hours to a Brand New Brand

Of all the things nonprofits do well, website design is...well, not one of them. And that's putting it politely. Unfortunately, a bad website is often just the tip of the iceberg for a larger challenge of storytelling and brand identity in general. With a team of interaction designers at their back, however, one nonprofit just got the ultimate brand makeover, and all in just 24 short hours.

ZURB is a Silicon Valley based interaction design firm that has worked with some of the best known startups in the world (Facebook, anyone?). Their services range from graphic design work to strategy, but all come back to helping organizations better communicate and interact with their supporters and users via the web.

Each year, the company holds a 24-hour design marathon called ZURBwired to help one local nonprofit reap the benefits of services that would otherwise cost tens of thousands of dollars. What's more, they call in a heap of volunteers to help out. All told, this year's team was about 35 members strong.

This year's beneficiary was Resource Area For Teaching (RAFT), a group that helps thousands of Bay Area teachers make science and math fun, engaging, and demonstrable without having to dig into their own pockets for special resources.

Unfortunately, RAFT's website and promotional materials did not do its important work justice. At all. ZURB's goal for the 24-hours was to completely redo their website from the ground up, design a slew of printed materials including their annual report, and put together a complete style guide for future designers working with the organization, in order to keep everything consistent.

The 24-hours was broken up into 4-hour chunks, and the whole group was split into a set of teams, each of which had different responsibilities based on when in the day it was. The first part of the day was spent on brainstorming, conceptualizing, and making recommendations. From there, it moved quickly into execute mode, particularly for the printed materials which were on a tight deadline to be printed for the next morning.

The evening and night saw most of the team focused on the website itself -- the main goal. The hardcore engineers were coding the backend, the graphic designers were working on the front end, and others were working on copy or the site hierarchy.

By 8 AM the next morning, the group had accomplished basically all of its goals, which is just awesome. Importantly, they documented everything. The dozens of blog posts, hundreds of photos and other media they created are great not just as a way to tell a cool story, but because they lay out a framework for how other organizations could conceptualize their entire design process - even if its not going to be executed in just one quick day.

To read the whole story, check out the ZURB blog.

Photo credit: ZURB