1. 2023 ARC Brand Traits that answer to photojournalism’s guiding principles
    • Emotional: Empathetic, Authentic, Warm
    • Rational: Confident, Credible, Neutral
    • Reaction: Make it easy for people to act, Walk the talk
  2. Respecting the diverse needs of varied user groups, e.g. newly arrived refugees in need of humanitarian aid, philanthropists wishing to support and be involved in ARCs work
  3. A consistent and flexible system that builds trust in the brand and creates the space to manage the complexity of the organisation

Our research has shown that there are two main user groups, very distinctive from each other:

  1. people seeking help who often arrive on the site in distressing situations shortly after a disaster or having newly arrived in Australia
  2. people wishing to give help who often seek validation as well as guidance in how they can best support others

As part of the guidance developed for content creators that sits at the heart of this project, we have developed a set of key pages with a focus on fulfilling the specific needs of these users.

Beyond the strategic, our focus has also always been on creating a modern, vibrant digital brand.

We have therefore added more animation, used techniques such as parallax and horizontal scrolls for extra movement, and included more video content capabilities than ever.

We are currently collaborating with digital developers LEVO to make our designs real, rolling out the design update across all components and page templates.

For ease of communication, we have devised a ‘component spec sheet’ design reference. This has proven to be so successful that we are planning to make it part of our Deepend design to dev handover process.

The Design System is published both as a Figma library file and as a GEL website available to all Australian Red Cross staff so that everyone can see and easily use the information.

The GEL is largely focused on educating Red Cross teams and developing common language in detail on every component so that teams are better able to collaborate and create content together.

This project is still under development and not published.