What impact do you hope the color scheme will have on visitors to the website?
KS: I know for me, color has always been a central part of the CSIS brand. We intentionally used very bold colors because I think our work requires a certain level of boldness and brightness. You need to be bright, and you need to stay bright, and you need to remain positive to be able to do this work. We actually brightened up a lot of the colors from our original logo and made it more aligned with jewel tones, so they’re even more bold. Which is one thing I love about the color scheme and how we’ve gone about that. And we’re playing around a lot more with layering colors on top of each other in really interesting ways, which I think is something L+L drove us through. Before we would use color as a highlight or spotlight and really stick to one color at a time, but we’ve moved now into overlapping multiple colors in really interesting ways, which I think is more reflective of an interrelated, and intersectional, approach to social impact.
How are CSIS’s values emphasized?
KS: We just realized in these five years that people, both our students and our staff, gravitate a lot towards our values. Originally, we thought we should just write them in the booklets, just so people could know what they were. Then, we put them on large banners and we realized people really liked them and started taking pictures with them, so we put them on larger banners. People liked them even more and it became part of our set design. The values have sort of become this really interesting and, I think, unifying artifact within the Center. And it was unintentional. Although when you think about it, it’s not surprising because I think that sum up our motivators. It describes why we do what we do. And to a degree it describes our alumni community pretty effectively. So we spent a lot of time illustrating each of the values into some sort of visual with the hope that we would be able to do them a little bit more justice in terms of a larger brand and be able to highlight them more.
What do you hope the website conveys to visitors?
KS: I think the first thing I wish it would do is convey that the Center is optimistic and it believes in a better world. My hope is that the website helps folks find either community or content or confidence so that they can start doing the work that they want to be doing right away. And it can meet them wherever they are. I want the website to be able to meet all of those folks where they’re at. And have the unifying value be one about people who believe in a better world and want to do something about pursuing that vision today.
L+L: One of the best surprises in this whole process has been participating tangentially in the passion and enthusiasm that folks at CSIS effuse. They’re truly passionate about social impact work and the people they get to share it with. We hope that some of that pure, unabashed joy comes through in the design. Social impact strategy is serious work, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun!