Brand Refresh and Site Migration | POGO
Some Context
During my time managing the website for the Project On Government Oversight as a digital media manager, I had encountered several pain points with the CMS, a proprietary system that was becoming increasingly slow, prone to error, and lacking in necessary modern features, such as the ability for site-wide encryption (a particular problem given the organization’s work with whistleblowers.)The organization was also due for a website overhaul: POGO, unfortunately, had completed its last redesign right before responsive design came onto the scene and so was running both a mobile and desktop version of the site.
When the organization was approached for a large grant in 2017, I made the case to senior leadership that setting aside some of those resources to move to a new CMS — while a major undertaking — was a necessary effort that would allow the website to much better serve the needs of the organization’s mission and readership.
My Role
From 2017-2018, I led a $160,000 effort with an in-house team of four to overhaul POGO’s visual presence and migrate the organization's website to Craft CMS.I served as project lead on the three major phases of this project:
- A comprehensive (and first-ever) content audit of POGO’s archival work
- A branding discovery and refresh with POGO staff, stakeholders, and audience
- The website redesign and content migration, in partnership with an external vendor
Content audit
I led what would be the first-ever audit of POGO’s content. I made the argument to leadership this was necessary to achieve our SEO goals, though it would mean a significant investment of staff time over the course of several months.
Dating back to 1990s, POGO’s thousands of pieces of content had been migrated and reorganized multiple times. The result was that many pages across the site were outdated, broken, missing key links or content, had inconsistent fields or formatting, or were no longer relevant to the organization’s current work and mission.
To undertake the content audit, I used Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider Tool to crawl the site. I divided this master file into sections and developed a criteria for the team to be able to evaluate what content we would keep or pull offline for archival use andtrack what needed fixing in order to migrate.
Dating back to 1990s, POGO’s thousands of pieces of content had been migrated and reorganized multiple times. The result was that many pages across the site were outdated, broken, missing key links or content, had inconsistent fields or formatting, or were no longer relevant to the organization’s current work and mission.
To undertake the content audit, I used Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider Tool to crawl the site. I divided this master file into sections and developed a criteria for the team to be able to evaluate what content we would keep or pull offline for archival use andtrack what needed fixing in order to migrate.
It involved many, many spreadsheets.
Branding refresh
I also led POGO’s first-ever branding process.
I knew going into this project that leadership and the board did not wish to substantially change the logo, as it carried significant brand recognition among government audiences. I also anticipated that the design would be shaped in collaboration with whatever external agency we would eventually work with to develop the website.
In redesigning the brand, I wanted to unify visual treatments and establish consistency. One key part of this was the identity for three of POGO’s sub-projects: the Center for Defense Information, the Congressional Oversight Initiative, and The Constitution Project.
The result of organizational mergers, each of these sub-projects were carrying an existing identity and microsite. In approaching the brand, I worked with stakeholders on how we could preserve these sub-projects while preventing the brand from fracturing its identity across its various content.
From those workshops and other internal discovery, I learned the organization was looking and willing to make a much bolder step forward in its work as a newsroom and advocacy organization. I presented three visual directions to stakeholders to help further uncover and dig into how this brand would take shape.
From those conversations, I created what would become the brand we would eventually share with our external vendor when redesigning the site.
I knew going into this project that leadership and the board did not wish to substantially change the logo, as it carried significant brand recognition among government audiences. I also anticipated that the design would be shaped in collaboration with whatever external agency we would eventually work with to develop the website.
In redesigning the brand, I wanted to unify visual treatments and establish consistency. One key part of this was the identity for three of POGO’s sub-projects: the Center for Defense Information, the Congressional Oversight Initiative, and The Constitution Project.
The result of organizational mergers, each of these sub-projects were carrying an existing identity and microsite. In approaching the brand, I worked with stakeholders on how we could preserve these sub-projects while preventing the brand from fracturing its identity across its various content.
In-House Discovery
To better guide our process with an agency, I undertook an in-house discovery to shape and test some of the bones of the new brand. I led several workshops with POGO staff, stakeholders, and key audience members to understand how the organization was perceived and how it wanted to position itself moving forward.From those workshops and other internal discovery, I learned the organization was looking and willing to make a much bolder step forward in its work as a newsroom and advocacy organization. I presented three visual directions to stakeholders to help further uncover and dig into how this brand would take shape.
From those conversations, I created what would become the brand we would eventually share with our external vendor when redesigning the site.
The new brand, “A Beacon in the Darkness,” was inspired by a bolder, grittier take on POGO’s previous brand.The primary source nature of POGO’s historic and investigative work inspired the tactile distinctive assets and textures used in the brand. The typography and color palette built upon POGO’s previous brand, echoing the bold primary typography and dominant teal and grey colors.
For the sub-project identities, blue and purple echoed the previous brands of the Center for Defense Information and The Constitution Project, respectively, as a nod to those sub-projects’ former brand identities.