Filling the Local Election Information Gap for NYC Voters
It’s simple: the more informed we are, the more likely we are to participate in elections. Guided by this fact, scholars at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs…
Teaching Matters
Positioning an Education Brand to Help Every Student Reach Their Full Potential
Since 1994, the education nonprofit Teaching Matters has provided excellent educational coaching and resources to improve the quality of education for students in the New York City metropolitan area. Having supported more than 1,600 schools, trained more than 38,000 educators, and impacted more than 670,000 students, in 2022, Teaching Matters sought to expand their reach and open a new chapter for their brand, impact, and website. Together, we co-created a brand and website that draws a clear connection between excellence in education and outcomes for students—one that feels joyful, prioritizes equity, and elevates teachers to invite a new generation of educators into the Teaching Matters community.
Brand Assessment
Applying an Asset Framing Lens to Evaluate the Brand
When we started working with Teaching Matters, the story of the education nonprofit was founded on deficit framing—focusing on the problems and inequities that plague the education system. Its visual brand, with dark colors, hard corners, and bulky components, failed to reflect the brand’s optimism. Alternatively, asset framing offers a more compelling story for nonprofit brands, focusing on people’s inherent strengths to inform solutions that lead to better education outcomes. To better understand Teaching Matters’ brand strengths and landscape, we conducted extensive interviews, research, and workshops to surface strategic insights. We then distilled our findings into a Brand Assessment that established our baseline for brand transformation.
Brand Stratetgy
A Brand Strategy to Engage Educators, Increase Equity & Elevate Students
After working closely with Teaching Matters to learn about and evaluate the current state of their brand, we were ready to move forward and write the next chapter in their organization’s story. We uncovered key brand themes in our Brand Assessment, such as equity as a unifying message, addressing the opportunity gap, and showcasing the transformative power of excellent education. Activating these ideas was Teaching Matters’ theory of change, which connects access to high-quality professional development for educators, activating hearts and minds in classrooms, and improving outcomes for every student. With these brand pillars as our foundation, we developed a new strategy for Teaching Matters to guide every brand expression and experience we needed to design.
Brand Messaging
New Brand Messaging to Create Necessary Narrative Shifts
Teaching Matters is on a mission to change education systems by changing mindsets. With our brand assessment and strategy to guide us, together with the Teaching Matters team, we created a new language for articulating the organization’s impact. Shifting from deficit to asset framing, we created a new mission, vision, and tagline for the brand as well as defined the organization’s values, personality, roles, and more. Connecting the organization’s resources, optimism, and impact to the brand’s verbal language enables the Teaching Matters team to better embody the brand and engage their core audiences around their shared vision of improving education equity by championing excellent teaching.
Visual Identity
Branding That Embodies the Strength and Joy in Education
Before our partnership, Teaching Matters’ brand failed to demonstrate the joy in excellent education. To bring the organization’s new verbal brand principles to life, we created a refreshed visual identity that emulated the brand’s energy, optimism, and values. The organization’s name, “Teaching Matters,” is a powerful statement, and to elevate its power, we opted to make the logo a typographical mark with the organic, chalk-like underline. Throughout the system, we incorporated organic elements on components like stars, shapes, and squiggles to reflect the lived experience of educators. To elevate the brand’s optimism, we incorporated bright, vibrant colors throughout, and to highlight the brand’s hero—educators—we featured photography of Teaching Matters educators, often in silhouette. Together, we created a robust design system that demonstrated the joy in the Teaching Matters mission.
User Experience & Content Strategy
Designing the Blueprint for a Website That Engages & Supports Educators
Educators—especially educators in under-resourced communities—have competing priorities. When they’re seeking a resource, they deserve efficiency and an easy user experience. Of course, Teaching Matters speaks to more than just educators; the organization also works with administrators, donors, and researchers. To design the user experience and underlying system that catered to these audiences, we led workshops to identify the different ways the website can help people achieve their goals, then organized dozens of pieces of content to engage them online. The result tells a clear brand narrative of the core resources and values that define Teaching Matters’ work, driving educational resources and coaching, and inviting any visitor to get involved in the organization’s critical mission.
Website Design
Designing Experiences Online That Deliver on Brand Purpose
In Teaching Matters’ website, we translated our strategy, branding, and UX research into a digital brand experience that represents the organization’s values, mission, and impact. We started the design process by establishing a new design system to introduce the brand’s typography, colors, imagery, and design components. Working closely with the team at Teaching Matters, we iteratively reviewed and extended our website design in stages, discussing and refining as we built a comprehensive design system of styles, components, and templates that carry throughout the website. The result is a strongly branded website experience—one that’s vibrant, emulating the brand’s high energy while elevating the organization’s commitment to closing the opportunity gap in schools by advancing excellent education.
The new Teaching Matters website leads with bold, vibrant visuals, centers on their commitment to closing the opportunity gap, and supports educators with access to the resources they need to provide excellent education.
Website Design & Development
Elevating the Impact of Excellent Education on Increasing Equity
Teaching Matters believes in building a world where every student has equitable access to excellent teaching, regardless of zip code. To advance this vision, their core strategy involves partnering with school leaders to provide professional development and curricular materials. A website that engages educators was just a first step. To make a meaningful difference in addressing education inequity, Teaching Matters’ website needed to give teachers—their brand hero—a reason to believe. It needed to demonstrate how their approach and theory of change created tangible results, both in terms of student outcomes and teachers’ experiences. Teaching Matters’ new website elevates impact statistics and personal testimonials that make clear how they and their partners are changing an inequitable system.
Website Design & Strategic Content
Coaching & Resources for Every Educator at Every Level
To activate Teaching Matters’ theory of change, the organization’s website needed to elevate and make easily accessible the breadth of teaching resources for educators. With resources for teachers ranging from Pre-K to 12th grade, the Teaching Matters website shares the programming, curricula, and coaches available to help educators achieve excellent teaching for every student. The “Our Services” section of Teaching Matters’ website is designed not just to show these resources and coaching programs for educators, but also to instill trust in their ability to elevate excellent education. Throughout the pages and resources, we interspersed impactful statistics, testimonials, and videos affirming the Teaching Matters means for change.
Website Design & Content
Engaging Experts, Volunteers & Donors to Raise the Bar
Like most nonprofits, Teaching Matters addresses several key audiences with diverse interests, needs, questions, and action paths. Key amongst Teaching Matters’ audience are educators and education experts, volunteers, and donors. To ensure the website met the needs and backgrounds of each audience, we designed it so that each stakeholder could quickly identify their path for engagement and pursue their curiosities, take action, or deepen their relationship with the Teaching Matters brand. In its content structure, the Teaching Matters website speaks to these audiences, demonstrates channels for engagement for educators, and offers ways to make a difference, catering specifically to the needs of supporters and donors.
