Branding + Website Redesign
SHOUT Tenant Union
Graphic Design
New York, NY, USA
SHOUT (Supportive Housing Organized and United Tenants) is a tenant union in New York City serving tenants and applicants of New York's Supportive Housing system — which offers permanent housing to vulnerable New Yorkers such as those who are or have been unhoused and their families, those with disabilities, those who are transitioning out of institutional settings such as rehabilitation facilities, the carceral system, or are aging out of foster care.
The organization was looking to redesign their website, a task which dovetailed into the necessity to create a branding system that would work across their communications platforms — Squarespace and Canva, as well as future projects in developmen
The organization was looking to redesign their website, a task which dovetailed into the necessity to create a branding system that would work across their communications platforms — Squarespace and Canva, as well as future projects in developmen
The Case for a Redesign
SHOUT's original website
SHOUT’s existing site felt underdeveloped and flat, lacked visual hierarchy and fell short of ADA accessibility standards, a significant concern for a membership that includes people with disabilities and seniors.
Another pain point was that their sole staff organizer was responsible for both maintaining the site and producing all social media content. Without a coherent visual identity or ready-made assets to draw from, each social media post meant starting from scratch with no direction, consuming time better spent organizing.
Another pain point was that their sole staff organizer was responsible for both maintaining the site and producing all social media content. Without a coherent visual identity or ready-made assets to draw from, each social media post meant starting from scratch with no direction, consuming time better spent organizing.
The goal was twofold:
︎ Create a visually elevated, accessible web and social media presence that lends legitimacy to SHOUT's work and reflects their spirited identity as an organization
︎ Establish a cohesive, dynamic, and flexible branding system for their organizer to use across Squarespace and Canva, as well as support forthcoming legislative print materials, and other projects of varying complexity in development
︎ Create a visually elevated, accessible web and social media presence that lends legitimacy to SHOUT's work and reflects their spirited identity as an organization
︎ Establish a cohesive, dynamic, and flexible branding system for their organizer to use across Squarespace and Canva, as well as support forthcoming legislative print materials, and other projects of varying complexity in development
Some of SHOUT's original social media posts
Type Styles
To counter the flat, static look of the website, I selected three typefaces to create dynamic contrast. Since some of their posts were quite lengthy, it also felt important to give them three typefaces so they could distinguish content through more than just sizing — saving space and avoiding the need to shrink text too small — again, a concern for their membership which included seniors and folks with disabilities.
All typefaces are available on both Squarespace and Canva, and free for future print needs. Since Squarespace only allows two fonts (headings and body copy), Sanchez serves as an accent font in that context, used for buttons and captions.
Icon Set
One obstacle that created both a time burden and a lack of cohesion in SHOUT's social media content was a shortage of graphic assets to create dyanmic compositions. Their organizer was defaulting to assembling social media posts with random color blocking and shapes, and photography of inconsistent quality from various members’ phones. Similarly, the original website had little to work with beyond text. Developing a custom icon set centered on the key themes of SHOUT's work built a visual narrative that could be iterated upon, and filled the void of reliable graphics that could be called upon to create compelling, cohesive compositions.
A New York Palette
SHOUT’s logo had already been developed using black text with an orange accent, which they wanted to retain, in addition to exploring a blue they’d used on occassion. Nonetheless, I wanted to make sure we built a narrative through the palette so the exact tones were revisited and the palette extended to give us the opportunity to use the 6 icons as a set with minimal color repetition. Inspired by a day in the life of a New Yorker, the extended palette would also lend typographic and graphic compositions depth and variety, rather than staying within one family of tones the way the website had — which we’d already seen fell flat and lacked dynamic contrast.
Because of a concern around accessibility for senior and disabled members a secondary, supporting palette was also developed to serve as backgrounds and accents as needed — offering contrast to the primary palette ensuring legibility and flexibility when working with multiple colors.
