We Make Change
Website redesign, CMS migration, Asset design
2024
Challenge
Four years after launching its platform in 2020, We Make Change had scaled to 40,000+ volunteers, hundreds of impact startups, and some of the top corporate teams across the globe—becoming one of the leading platforms and networks for remote volunteering.
However, the brand evolved along with this growth, and the existing website no longer matched the scale and ambition of the company. It was time for a redesign.
After volunteering through the platform earlier this year, James (CEO at We Make Change) reached out to me with this project.
The existing website was built by him through trial and error. It no longer portrayed well enough the DNA of the company and benefits for the different user groups. The branding was inconsistent and didn't match the vision of the brand. The existing CMS and setup also had a number of issues making updating the website while maintaining brand consistency and responsiveness difficult.
Solution
Over the next 2 months I redesigned the website from scratch in Framer. We also revamped the copy and designed new website assets.
Branding
Since the project scope included a brand revamp, we began by choosing the core branding elements and themes. From there we mapped out the information architecture of the site.
Prototypes
I started the design process in Framer directly using a base template. This allowed me to very quickly create branded high-fidelity prototypes of each page. Throughout 3 feedback rounds we refined the layouts and the components.
Copywriting
The copywriting effort was done by the We Make Change team. A few reflections:
Having high-fidelity prototypes makes it much easier to write copy
Adding copy in the Framer CMS is much more efficient than working from a copy doc
Copy and design go hand in hand—they need to be worked in parallel
Asset design
Designing the assets was the trickiest but most rewarding part. For We Make Change, the platform "product" is not the main selling point per se, but rather the community, network, and ecosystem that they have built. Hence, we had to find a creative way to visualize this without using platform mockups.
CMS migration & launch
The migration from Squarespace to Framer and website launch was seamless.
We launched the new wemakechange.org on October 27, 2024.
