Among the first private foundations started by a woman in America, Anna M. Harkness, The Commonwealth Fund is a leading healthcare research nonprofit whose mission is to ensure a high-performing health care system that achieves greater access, quality, and efficiency of care for all Americans. Looking to strengthen their brand, Commonwealth’s team asked Constructive to update their historic brand and redesign their communication design by conduct a branding and design audit; then lead development of a comprehensive design system to increase the cohesion and quality of the nonprofit’s communications.
Understanding the Current State of the Brand
We kicked off the rebranding process by asking questions and conducting research. We first established strategic goals, collecting and evaluating years of Commonwealth’s print and digital communications, and discussing the nonprofit’s production design workflows. The resulting brand communications audit identified issues and solutions to improve communication design quality, consistency, and effectiveness—insights were used to then prioritize needs and develop an execution plan to redesign the healthcare nonprofit’s branding and communications.
Expanding the Existing Visual Identity: Healthcare Research Nonprofit Rebrand
While Commonwealth wanted to improve their branding, they were reluctant to change their recently redesigned logo. In order to be more strategically and functionally sound, however, we recommended a slight refresh. After making subtle improvements to the mark and choosing a more effective core brand typeface, we developed a design system of colors, typefaces, imagery, and iconography to support Commonwealth’s content-heavy communications. As we continued extending into communication design, we documented Commonwealth’s new design system in brand guidelines that provide detailed specifications for designing across digital and print media.
Digital Strategy & User Experience Communication Design
Strengthening the healthcare system by producing research and analysis for policymakers, business leaders, and experts in the NGO sector is integral to The Commonwealth Fund’s strategy to advance its mission. We improved the effectiveness of the nonprofit’s knowledge communications and their ability to produce them with a suite of templates for their frequent Issue Briefs and White Papers that provides structure, increases readability, and elevates top-level takeaways for the complex issues Commonwealth dives into with its long-form content.
Visually Engaging Audiences With Complex Issues
The Commonwealth Fund works on complex issues in an opaque healthcare sector. So, to successfully advance their work and reach a more broad audience, an essential part of the nonprofit’s strategy is to communicate by using infographics and data visualizations that can engage and educate expert and non-expert audiences alike. We created a flexible, scalable system for producing both types of visual communications into Commonwealth’s design system—designing styles and templates for print and digital media that clarify the issues and deliver impact for the nonprofit’s reports, briefs, presentations, and social media.
Providing a Platform for Public Speakers
It can be challenging for research-driven, policy-focused nonprofits like The Commonwealth Fund to distill the findings of their work into presentations for live audiences. While they know more than anyone else about the issue area they’re presenting on, the experts responsible for creating such presentations often know little about how to design effectively. We solved this problem for Commonwealth by designing a suite of presentation templates and data visualizations to help their team turn detailed research into communications with effective communication design that educate and influence audiences.
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If you would like to explore a more visual case-study for our work with The Commonwealth Fund, click here.
If you’d like to explore more of Constructive’s work with healthcare & social services nonprofits, case studies are available here.
