Tostan is an innovative African community development nonprofit focused on human rights and women’s empowerment. In the middle of a rebranding and with an upcoming book tour promoting a biography of their founder, Molly Melching, Tostan turned to Constructive to develop a new digital strategy and create multi-lingual websites. The catch? We had 4 short months to get everything done.
We quickly got to work on research and digital strategy, interviewing Tostan’s leadership teams in Africa and Washington, DC, auditing their existing website, and learning about the African community development nonprofit sector. Our resulting content strategy and information architecture articulate Tostan’s impact by providing a narrative platform that explains their innovative model, educates on their programs across 5 core issue areas, highlights their work in 8 African nations, and shares stories of the lives positively impacted by Tostan’s work.
Tostan’s new positioning and visual identity were still being in development overseas, meaning their brand lacked visual standards to inform website design. Partnering with Tostan’s branding agency, M&C Saatchi, we recommended revised colors and web typography based on their in-process logo to create a bold, colorful user experience. We then iterated rapidly on design concepts with Tostan’s team, creating a website that informed and extended their rebranding, bringing it to life with a blend of color, pattern, typography, and imagery.
Tostan’s website connects audiences to the organization by telling their story, demonstrating their impact, and using a combination of field photography, illustration, color, and typography that bring their life to work online.
“We gave Constructive an extremely tight timeline to deliver innovative websites in English and French to coincide with a book release about Tostan’s founder, Molly Melching. Their strategic insight was crucial, as was their flexibility. Beyond site design, they helped us extend our rebranding online, developed content strategy to strengthen our message, and impressively accomplished it all within our 4-month timeline.”
